I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I like this movie despite its many flaws and would cautiously recommend it. Possibly because Deneuve and Belmondo are such an attractive couple it doesn't matter what they do. The first half of the film is a Hitchcockian thriller about deceit, greed, and obsession set against the exotic backdrop of Reunion Island. But the mystery is cleared up quickly and it becomes a rather unconvincing lovers-on-the-run drama, not unlike Belmondo's "Breathless." I found the ending to be a colossal letdown in light of everything leading up to it. This was Truffaut's second attempt at a "Hitchcock" movie, and I think "The Bride Wore Black" succeeds better than this one because Truffaut maintains the suspense throughout. It's also got the edge thanks to the Bernard Herrmann score. Had "Mississippi Mermaid" stuck to its roots as typically offbeat Cornell Woolrich pulp fiction it could have been great.

Every major director has experienced inevitably laborious phases of making really bad films.This happens as there are times when all creative people tend to hibernate.French new wave wonder kid Truffaut is also no exception to dreadfully malevolent rule of bad film making. There have been some phases in his cinematographic career wherein he has made some really atrocious films.One can quote films like "The Bride wore black"/La Mariée était en noir, "The Man who loved women"/L'Homme Qui Aimait Les Femmes and "Mississippi Mermaid"/La Sirène Du Mississipi as some of the bland films which have been directed by Truffaut. Mississippi Mermaid is a colossal failure as its star studded caste is largely wasted.One of French cinema's most vibrant pairs actors Jean Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve look interesting but hardly offer any proofs of good acting.This film about a mail order bride is a good example of foregone conclusion as there is neither proper suspense nor any kind of well developed mystery.Truffaut has attempted to make a good film about love but ended creating a farce about a woman who gets the better of a stupid man.

"Julie, you are adorable," says Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to his beautiful new mail- order bride, Julie Rousel (Catherine Deneuve). "Do you know what that means? 'Adorable'. It means worthy of adoration." Louis is a wealthy tobacco grower and cigarette manufacturer on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. When Julie arrived on the island, she didn't look like the photograph she had sent him when she agreed to be his wife. She says she was timid and decided to send the photograph of her sister. Louis is enchanted by her beauty and understands her caution. They marry, and Louis becomes a husband deeply happy. He tells her she is worthy of adoration just a day or two after he arranges to change his personal and business accounts into joint accounts. That evening, Julie has disappeared, cleaning out both accounts. Louis goes to France, has a breakdown, and then by chance sees Julie in a newscast about a new nightclub and the women there who are hostesses. Louis learns she is really a woman named Marion Vergano. Marion's history would lead only the most obsessed of men to think a happy ending could be in the cards. Most of the movie places us in France after Louis has found her and accepted her as Marion Vergano Mississippi Mermaid, written and directed by Francois Truffaut, is a movie of Louis' obsession, of sexual psychosis, of parasitic selfishness, of stolen identity and of rat poison, with a lot of self-revealing (some of it even true) dialog thrown in. As much as I think comparing one director to another is usually pointless, in this case Truffaut may have watched Vertigo, Psycho and Marnie once too often. Still, murder at the top of the stairs, the star power of Deneuve and Belmondo and some eccentric passing opinions (Louis thinks Johnny Guitar is "a love story, with lots of feeling in it."), all handled with Truffaut's characteristic confidence isn't something to pass by. The downside is that Mississippi Mermaid, despite all of its advantages, at times veers too close to melodramatic parody. "You mustn't cry, my dear. It's your happiness I want, not your tears." "I'm learning what love is, Louis. It's painful. It hurts me." It sounds better in French, but the meaning is just as soppy. Truffaut adapted his movie from the pulp mystery novel, Waltz into Darkness, by Cornell Woolrich writing as William Irish. The movie didn't do too well the first time out, but then underwent a rediscovery of sorts. Unfortunately, that meant articles by people who teach film studies at universities. One such person wrote, Mississippi Mermaid "remains a fascinating exploration of the major themes essayed by movie melodramas of betrayal - a sort of distillation of the amoral nucleus of Double Indemnity and the wilder settings of Key Largo." Distillation of the amoral nucleus? I don't even know what an amoral nucleus is. The salient point, for me, is that films such as Double Indemnity and Key Largo are above all else tightly told stories. I think Truffaut with Mississippi Mermaid started with a nice, nasty, obsessional pulp tale, but then tried to do too much with it.

In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, the owner of a cigarette factory Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is engaged through correspondence with Julie Roussel and he does not know her. When Julie arrives in the island to get married with Louis, he waits for her in the docks but Louis does not recognize Julie in the passenger vessel and finds that she is totally different from the picture she had sent to Louis. They get married and Louis shares his bank accounts with her. When Julie's sister writes a letter to Louis asking her sister to write to her, Louis discovers that the woman is not Julie that is missing. Further, he finds that the woman has cleared his bank accounts and left the island. Louis and Julie's sister hire an efficient private detective Comolli (Michel Bouquet) and Louis travels to France seeking the woman, but he has a nervous breakdown in Nice and is submitted to an intense sleeping therapy in a clinic. He recovers and finds that the woman, actually Marion Vergano (Catherine Deneuve), works in the Phoenix Club Privé in Antibes and lives in the low-budget Monorail Hotel. Louis breaks in her room and when she arrives from the club, she tells that she was happy with him but her former dangerous lover Richard had blackmailed her. Louis is still in love with Marion and escapes with her to the countryside. But Comolli is chasing Marion in France accused of murdering Julie."La Sirène du Mississipi" is a film-noir by the great director/writer François Truffaut, with an unconventional love story of passion, murder and love that hurts. The femme fatale Catherine Deneuve is astonishing, probably in the top of her beauty and is delightful to see her face and the topless scenes on the road and in the room. Jean-Paul Belmondo is very athletic, and the sequence when he escalates the wall of the hotel is impressive. Catherine Deneuve makes this film worth and gives credibility to the passion and lust of Louis. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Sereia do Mississipi" ("The Mississippi Mermaid")