While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's a bubbe meise...LIU.I have a friend who thinks this is a great movie. Or that there is something great about it. The progression from the tropics of Ile de la Réunion to freezing snowy Switzerland - or should we call that a degeneration? Well, in either case, I got to read up on Environmental Determinism - read IMDb and you can learn things! Well, at least sometimes...Where was I? Oh yeah, I have a friend who thinks this is a great movie. Or that there are great things about it. Well, I guess there are some. I mean, I'm a real sucker for Nouvelle Vague referencing: Arizona Jim, Johnny Guitar, Renoir's La Marseillaise...that kind of stuff. And the shape - shifting blonde. Like in Vertigo. The Environmental thing is audacious - L'Amour Fou, in spades! Lots of efficiency, scenes doing double - duty in a jump - cut kind of way. Ridiculously French Movie Elegance, rivaling Ava Gardner movies and things like that, but with its own cultural specificity.But ultimately, I feel like the elegance and the directorial interjections don't really speak to each other, and don't really add up to so much. The film feels strenuous, and not in a way that I find so rewarding. I think that one of the ideas is that, underneath all of the movie conceits, there is a kernel of painful truth about the anarchic craziness of love and passion. Well, that might be so. But I think there are many films that make that point - can I say "better"? OK, I will! I'd like to say "more artistically", or "in a more penetrating way", or "more clearly", etc...But "better" will do for now.

There's not an awful lot that's credible in Truffaut's re-writing of William Irish's plotty thriller. The attractive leads, the mise-en-scene and the location carry interest for about half of the film, by which time it just becomes silly. I'm not sure what Truffaut intended, because from the start Monsieur Belmondo does not convince that he's a man who's spent his life on Reunion Isalnd, running a cigarette factory. Even less convincing is Mlle Deneuve as an ex-reform school adventuress - perfectly groomed with Yves St Laurent outfits, her delicate skin and unemotional expressions. Much of the potentially intriguing plot is told instead of shown; there are ludicrous coincidences and character transformations, and a central relationship that's uninteresting. Nevertheless there are sequences which have that good old Truffaut oomph; and sequences which have that bad old Truffaut pfft. Camera work and music are splendid.

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.

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")