Mississippi Mermaid

Louis, a wealthy tobacco manufacturer on Reunion island, waits at the harbour to marry a woman he found through a newspaper advertisement. The woman who steps off the ship looks nothing like the photograph in the letters. He marries her anyway, and soon she disappears with the money. Francois Truffaut directed, from Cornell Woolrich's novel. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Louis, Catherine Deneuve the woman. Truffaut uses his admiration for Hitchcock openly here, but the film stops being a thriller and turns into a story of obsession. The man cannot leave her even knowing she robbed him. Two major stars together had raised commercial expectations; it fell far short in France and was a financial failure for Truffaut. Deneuve's character does not fit the femme fatale template; what she wants is unclear too, and the film does not resolve it. The story was remade in America in 2001 as Original Sin. Who it is for: viewers who like Truffaut's genre experiments and stories of obsessive love. Who it is not for: anyone expecting suspense; the film slows to a halt in the middle.