Mississippi Mermaid (1969)

• Year: 1969
• Released: 18 Jun 1969
• Country: France, Italy
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064990/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mississippi_mermaid
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: French
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
• Runtime: 123 min
• Writer: Cornell Woolrich, François Truffaut
• Director: François Truffaut
• Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Nelly Borgeaud
• Keywords: exotic island, love of one’s life, marriage, plantation, mail order bride, french noir,

	6.9/10
	82% – Critics
	73% – Audience

Mississippi Mermaid Storyline

When wealthy tobacco plantation owner, Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) meets his new mail-order bride Julie (Catherine Deneuve) at the Reunion Island shipyard, he is smitten by her beauty and overlooks her many mysterious habits. After they wed, he comes to realize that she is not the woman he corresponded with at all and she soon disappears with his entire bank account. His heartbreak and her cold betrayals drive him to track Julie down to France. She admits her real name- Marion- and that she had a male accomplice aboard ship who killed the actual Julie, but he had double-crossed Marion and ran with the money. Full of remorse, she asks him to kill her to end her sordid life. Louis cannot resist her candid confession and becomes both her accomplice and protector – even finding himself compelled to murder, to keep her from prison. He finally faces a test at Marion’s hands that convinces her she is worthy of his love.

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Mississippi Mermaid Movie Reviews

Passion, Murder and Love That Hurts

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”)

Romantic and suspenseful drama well realized by Truffaut in his own directorial style

This agreeable French movie deals about a millionaire owner of a tobacco factory on an African island nearly to Madagascar named Louis(Jean Paul Belmondo). He’s a single man looking wife, then he advertises a bride and gets a gorgeous woman named Julia(Catherine Deneuve). When she spontaneously appears turns out to be much more attractive than expected. He marries to Julia but she suddenly disappears.A French eye private(Michael Bouquet) is hired by Julia’s sister and soon he’s on the trail of his previous spouse. Later Louis encounters her in a dancing-hall under another name. In spite of the romantic delusion and everything, Louis goes on enamored with his enigmatic wife.

This film is a splendid drama plenty of betrayal,deception, killing, theft and Hitchcockian suspense. Good performances by Jean Paul Belmondo as young proprietary of a cigarette company who seems determined to fall under the spell of a femme fatale and a wonderful Catherine Deneuve as suspect heroine. The film gets several references to the American cinema, but Truffaut(400 blows) was a fervent moviegoer, such as : Johnny Guitar, Colorado Jim, Bogart, and Hitchcock.The USA version was cut numerous minutes and deserves an urgent restoring and remastering. Loosely based on the novel titled’Waltz into darkness’ by Cornell Woolrich (Rear window and screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock hour) who also was adapted in ‘Truffaut’s The bride wore black’.Colorful cinematography by Denys Clerval(Stolen kisses) and atmospheric musical score by Antoine Duhamel, Truffaut’s usual musician.This is one of the best of his suspense movies along with ¨Farenheit 451 and Shoot the piano player¨. Remade by an inferior version by Michael Christofer(2001) with Antonio Banderas, Angelina Jolie and Jack Thompson, full of erotic and lust scenes.

Way better than the remake

Welcome to the story of a single but very rich man who finally is going to marry a woman that he never saw in an arranged marriage, and it will turned out to be an astonishing surprise, after he discovers how beautiful this woman is, and then it will be a living nightmare when she reveals through strange actions that she’s not the one he would marry. This story is more familiar to new audiences who might have watched the horrendous “Original Sin” (2001) with Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas in the main roles. The only vantage that the remake has over Truffaut’s film is the awesome sex scenes which makes voyeuristic viewers go crazy over the bold moments of a poor film.

The French version has Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo in a more romantic story that breaks into a good thriller. It has some weak moments but still a good film that is directed by one of the most incredible and hard working directors of all time. The performers are elegant, and the way both actors portray their roles, in a mysterious and complex style makes of “Mississippi Mermaid” a very intriguing film where the next moment is the most interesting, the most awaited, it’s full of surprises (by the way the ending is different than the one unbelievably made in the remake).

Watch it without creating too much expectations and you’ll enjoy it. 9/10