Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Taken by her performance in the interestingly off-beat A Gorgeous Girl Like Me,I decided to take a look at actress Bernadette Lafont's other credits from the year.Looking round online for other Lafont movies,I stumbled upon one which sounded like a quality slice of French smut… I mean erotica,which led to me getting ready to find out how gorgeous this curious girl could be.The plot:Moving to a town in the countryside, Marie and her family are looked down upon by everyone,with all the men secretly groping Marie,thanks to no one listening to a word she says. Whilst cleaning up,Marie gets the tragic news that her mum has died after being hit by a car.Wanting to not see any of the villagers fake tears,Marie decides to bury her mother in the back garden (!) Disguised by how the town has treated her,Marie decides to turn the tables,by becoming the lone prostitute in the village. Used to having their way with her,the married men in the village secretly pay for her services,completely unaware that Marie is planning to show the true face of the village.View on the film:Joined by a cheeky Louis Malle as the reverent Jesus, (perhaps an in-joke over the response to Malle's The Lovers?) the very sexy Bernadette Lafont (who appears naked) gives an excellent performance as Marie.Starting the movie nervous and curled up in the corner, Lafont rolls out Marie to reveal a quick-witted pragmatic nature barely hidden behind Marie's risqué clothes.Looking at the village from the outcast perspective of Marie,the screenplay by co-writer/(along with Michel Fabre/Claude Makovski and Jacques Serguine) director Nelly Kaplan (a women director!) takes a satirical jab at the elite bourgeoisie lifestyle,by cleverly making everyone in the village expose their two-faced morals at the very first sight of the alluring vixen. Whilst offering some naughty flings,the writers mainly lace witty one liners which hit all the men trying to keep their good moral image,whilst secretly playing away with Marie.Soaking the village in a rustic grit,director Kaplan and cinematographer Jean Badal neatly balance the earthy shine by packing Marie's house with odds and ends brilliantly displayed which cast a rich bohemian atmosphere,as Marie reveals how curious she is.

...just as Manon des sources had done in Pagnol's film of 1952, to settle some old scores with the bigoted people in a small French town. The priest, the pharmacist, the bistro owner--they're all trying to cheat her in one way or another, and they all find her charms irresistible: no wonder, since she's played by Bernadette Lafont, the sexpot in so many films by Truffaut, Chabrol, Doniol-Valcroze, Molinaro etc. The story is flimsy, Kaplan's direction is loose and somewhat unfocused, and the viewer is left with the sense that this picture did not start a trend in French cinema (Bunuel, after all, was working the same vein at the time), nor is it the culmination of one.I haven't seen Nelly Kaplan's other films, and don't feel any loss. I think she was more of a theorist than an auteur. The film goes along agreeably enough, and Lafont and Michel Constantin make an attractive couple, but this is hardly essential viewing.

The story of a 'pirate' woman and social outcast of a provincial village. She turns to prostitution and seduces her clients into ruin. The themes of mockery remain strong, despite the common background of a small hut with bright colors in woodland. Greed and bigotry are present throughout, yet are refreshed with humorous characters and twists in the dialogue. The final blow for sexual and social revenge in humorous sequence struck in the church. The heroine (Bernadette Lafont) dances off down the open road, leaving behind the remains of a strange abstract sculpture of fridges, showers and junk, as she is portrayed as yet another 'free spirit'.

...but in 1969,she began to stand on her own two feet.And it was a masterstroke."La fiancée du pirate" was a highly successful movie which has stood the test of time quite well.Marie (Bernadette Laffont's vulgarity works wonders here) and her mother have always been outcasts ,living outside the village in a hut.Marie works on a farm where the lesbian farmer exploits her sexually and economically,and all the guys around treat her like a whore.When her mother dies,Marie does not want any religious funeral.Then begins Marie's revenge.Now she makes all the men from the village pay for her charms .She will turn all the hypocrite mean bourgeois's life upside town ,and her wholesale massacre comes to a head in the church where a tape recorder reveals the secrets ,warts an all.Nothing intellectual here,but a good sense of humor.It proves that sex can lead to (local) woman's lib.