Rating: 
Summary: Deneuve plays her role (s) with great skill.
Review: "Mississippi Mermaid" is an early Francois Truffaut film, and if it looks familiar--it may be that you've seen "Original Sin"--the Angelina Jolie/Antonio Banderas remake of the film. Louis Mahe (Jean-Paul Belmondo) plays a wealthy factory owner who lives on the small island, Reunion, near Africa. At the beginning of the film, Louis is eagerly expecting the arrival of his mail-order bride. Photo in hand, he impatiently waits for her to arrive, and when he is confronted with Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve) who is NOT the woman in the photo, he happily swallows the story that she sent him a photo of someone else--after all, they both engaged in minor deceits during their courtship by mail, so he overlooks the warning signals and marries her anyway. Soon, Louis becomes suspicious about his new bride's real identity, but he continues to elect acceptance. However, when he receives a letter from Julie's sister demanding to know why she hasn't heard from Julie, he is forced to confront Julie. Julie promptly cleans out the joint bank account and disappears.... I have never been a fan of Jean-Paul Belmondo's. However, in this film, his facial expressions were extremely impressive, and I began to see that perhaps I overlooked him in the past. Catherine Deneuve plays a chilling Julie Roussel/Marion Vergano. At the beginning of the film, Deneuve plays the demure Julie, but when the persona of Julie is dumped, and Deneuve assumes the identity of Marion, an ice queen emerges. Whereas Angelina played the Julie/Marion role with sizzling passion, Deneuve is icy, controlling and evil. However, this is the precise reason that it was difficult to understand why Mahe continued to adore Julie/Marion. The partnership from hell theory just doesn't hold for the on-screen relationship between Mahe and Marion--there wasn't enough sexual chemistry to explain it. And perhaps it can't be helped given the age of the film, but Denueve did manage two topless scenes--one which almost causes a car accident! The film is dated. The airplane travel scenes are tedious. When it is time for action, the camera just speeds up, and the effect is preposterous. However, "Mississippi Mermaid" is well worth a look if you are a die-hard fan of either French Cinema or Catherine Deneuve--displacedhuman, Amazon reviewer
Rating: 
Summary: horrible editing, acting, script and directing
Review: After watching 2/3 of this movie, I finally decided to drop it. The slant-eyed Paul Belmondo is the worst French actor I've ever seen. No talent at all. You better try the copycatting new "Original Sin" to see how good Bandaras(?) is. And the storyline is also better than this old one. The young French Actress was not yet fully developed with just cardboard like acting too.
Rating:
Summary: A noire thriller from Truffaut
Review: Although Mississippi Mermaid was considered one of Truffaut's losers, it has charm and the personalities of the characters will stay with you. It's clearly better than its reputation. Said to be influenced by Hitchcock and then rendered in the Truffautian style, it is a little off the beaten track, and the coincidences are a little ridiculous. Nonetheless Catherine Deneuve is outstanding and strangely at home in a role considered by many to be out of character for her, as though Grace Kelly might play Bonnie in "Bonnie and Clyde." This comes five years after Deneuve charmed audiences in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and two years after her success in Belle de Jour (1967). She stars here as a skanky ex-home girl with a murderous heart... For all her elegant beauty Deneuve does manage to look cheap and almost sleazy. In some ways she comes to life in this role more than in any other I've seen. Certainly I've never seen her sexier. Co-star Jean-Paul Belmondo is engaging as a slightly sweet and naive tobacco farmer from Reunion Island (near Madagascar) who gets Deneuve as a mail order bride, she and her bad boyfriend having first dumped the real mail order bride overboard en route. If you've never seen Belmondo you should since he was a sensation in his prime, something like a French Marlon Brando.
Rating:
Summary: A Dark and Obsessive Love Story...
Review: Begining rather unobtrusively, Louis (Belmondo) and Julie (Deneuve) meet for the first time after falling in love through the mail. It appears a rather normal French love tale, but soon Julie begins to show signs that there is more than meets the eye with her. When she disappears one day, he discovers several things about her. He travels from his island off the coast of Africa to France to find her and falls ill on the journey. He finds her soon after and they begin again as if nothing happened. Louis falls effortlessly into her dark world, doing acts he would never have even thought about committing and soon they are on the run. Truffaut shows us that under the right, or wrong circumstances any of us would do for the love of our life(especially if she is Catherine Deneuve). The thing I really loved about the film is Truffaut's subtle way of conveying the emotions of the charcters. When their love is going well it's bright and cheery, lots of yellows and sunshine, when it is going awry the colors are dark and the shadows are everywhere. This is a unique film about love and redemption. Both Deneuve and Belmondo give wonderful performances in a classic piece of noire from the genuis that was Francios Truffaut.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Buy Your Wife from a Catalogue!
Review: Both Francois Truffaut's "Mississippi Mermaid" and Michael Cristopher's "Original Sin" are based on the same Cornell Woolrich pot-boiler novel. Truffaut's version is a relatively bloodless affair especially since his stars, Catherine Deneuve and Jean Paul Belmondo play their roles as if they are slumming in "meler-dramer" country: they're much too polite and just plain cold, frigid even in their respective roles as Julie Roussel(really Julie Vergano) and Louis. Deneuve, of course is woefully miscast as Julie but Belmondo, on paper at least, must have seemed ideal as the kind, sexy, considerate, obsessed Louis. What happened? Though Truffaut was/is considered a director of the highest order, he doesn't have the requisite, particular passion to bring this very American story to life. For the same reason, if it were not for Jeanne Moreau's elegant, persuassive performance, his faux Hitchcock "The Bride wore Black" would have also been a failure.
In the new version "Original Sin," both Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas make Julie and Louis breathe with a life force that sets the screen on fire in a sexy, sweaty swirl of passion. These are not subtle roles....they need to played over-the-top. And this is what this material needs: not polite reverence but wild abandon.
Does this mean that Cristopher is a better director than Truffaut? No. Just better suited to the material, in this case.
On the other hand, Truffaut is a master and as such there are sublime passages in "Mississippi Mermaid," especially the scenes of obsession involving Louis and Julie's under clothing. But... Mermaid is a fascinating, beautiful failure but a failure nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Buy Your Wife from a Catalogue!
Review: Both Francois Truffaut's "Mississippi Mermaid" and Michael Cristopher's "Original Sin" are based on the same Cornell Woolrich pot-boiler novel. Truffaut's version is a relatively bloodless affair especially since his stars, Catherine Deneuve and Jean Paul Belmondo play their roles as if they are slumming in "meler-dramer" country: they're much too polite and just plain cold, frigid even in their respective roles as Julie Roussel(really Julie Vergano) and Louis. Deneuve, of course is woefully miscast as Julie but Belmondo, on paper at least, must have seemed ideal as the kind, sexy, considerate, obsessed Louis. What happened? Though Truffaut was/is considered a director of the highest order, he doesn't have the requisite, particular passion to bring this very American story to life. For the same reason, if it were not for Jeanne Moreau's elegant, persuassive performance, his faux Hitchcock "The Bride wore Black" would have also been a failure.
In the new version "Original Sin," both Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas make Julie and Louis breathe with a life force that sets the screen on fire in a sexy, sweaty swirl of passion. These are not subtle roles....they need to played over-the-top. And this is what this material needs: not polite reverence but wild abandon.
Does this mean that Cristopher is a better director than Truffaut? No. Just better suited to the material, in this case.
On the other hand, Truffaut is a master and as such there are sublime passages in "Mississippi Mermaid," especially the scenes of obsession involving Louis and Julie's under clothing. But... Mermaid is a fascinating, beautiful failure but a failure nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Starts well, loses steam
Review: Catherine Deneuve's character is a mail-order bride who finds herself the wife of a handsome, sexy, rich plantation owner. He quickly falls in love with her. (Spoiler warning! Read no more if you can't see this coming.) Spends money like water. Pampers her. Most of us would kill to be in her pumps. Trouble is, she has. Once this becomes clear, the film, I think, starts to lose steam. I didn't find his behavior, after he tracks her down, believable. The first half-hour, as daydream material while at your desk in some death-like job, is terrific.
Rating:
Summary: Darkest Deneuve
Review: I have not seen the DVD. I saw the classic Mermaid on its initial run in the theatres, and the impression continues to haunt me 30 years later. I attribute the impact almost entirely to Mlle Deneuve's diabolical portrait of an utterly lost soul. Of her massive cannon of femme noir performances (spanning nearly half a century), her brilliant, ongoing exhibition of the dark side of the "eternal feminine", none is quite as disturbing, as that of the icily vapid Julie, the heartless, mindless, psychotic and inevitably homocidal/suicidal 'substitute' mail order bride. In the Mermaid, which followed Belle de Jour and Repulsion in forming the foundation of Deneuve's introduction to an international audience (she'd been making films in France since the tender age of 13), Deneuve's character approaches the sub-human, becomming a sort of cosmic "black-hole" into which her victims (male) are helplessly drawn in a haze romantic self-asserting ignorance, an archeology of a long-lost maenidic fury, or prehensile feminist epistemology, which, under the mature Truffaut's direction and Deneuve's characteristic restraint is played out in grave measures, a ponderous, agonizing, inexorable procession through a slough of despair to dissolution. If Mlle Deneuve et al. have succeeded in creating a character "rotton to her xx chromosone core", they have imparted something crucial about our humanity or lack thereof. For this reason, I rate the Mermaid not as merely good, but great, albeit uncomfortably great, which is perhaps why, it has always been consigned by critics to that dubious category of "flawed masterpieces". But it's worth the price, if for nothing more than to see Deneuve as a flaming redhead.
Rating:
Summary: Darkest Deneuve
Review: I have not seen the DVD. I saw the classic Mermaid on its initial run in the theatres, and the impression continues to haunt me 30 years later. I attribute the impact almost entirely to Mlle Deneuve's diabolical portrait of an utterly lost soul. Of her massive cannon of femme noir performances (spanning nearly half a century), her brilliant, ongoing exhibition of the dark side of the "eternal feminine", none is quite as disturbing, as that of the icily vapid Julie, the heartless, mindless, psychotic and inevitably homocidal/suicidal 'substitute' mail order bride. In the Mermaid, which followed Belle de Jour and Repulsion in forming the foundation of Deneuve's introduction to an international audience (she'd been making films in France since the tender age of 13), Deneuve's character approaches the sub-human, becomming a sort of cosmic "black-hole" into which her victims (male) are helplessly drawn in a haze romantic self-asserting ignorance, an archeology of a long-lost maenidic fury, or prehensile feminist epistemology, which, under the mature Truffaut's direction and Deneuve's characteristic restraint is played out in grave measures, a ponderous, agonizing, inexorable procession through a slough of despair to dissolution. If Mlle Deneuve et al. have succeeded in creating a character "rotton to her xx chromosone core", they have imparted something crucial about our humanity or lack thereof. For this reason, I rate the Mermaid not as merely good, but great, albeit uncomfortably great, which is perhaps why, it has always been consigned by critics to that dubious category of "flawed masterpieces". But it's worth the price, if for nothing more than to see Deneuve as a flaming redhead.
Rating:
Summary: DVD-production disaster
Review: If on one hand, "La Sirène du Mississipi" is not Truffaut's best, on the other, it is much better than many films we see nowadays -- say, the quasi-remake of this, called "Original Sin", starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas. Both films are based on Willian Irish's --or, if you will, Cornell Woolrich's -- "Waltz into Darkness". But the similarities end here. While Truffaut is an exercise of style and good taste, the other, directed by Michael Cristofer, is so meaningless that is almost vulgar. The plot is very simple, but at the same time catching. A man from Reunion Island orders a mail bride. When he meets her, she turns up to be more beautiful and dangerous than described in the letters and shown in the photos. He imedeately falls for her, and apparently so does she. We, and so does he, learn that she is not really what she meant to be. The film has some fine and exciting twists that keep you wondering what would come next. Catherine Deneuve plays the femme fatale. She comes fresh from Buñuel's "La Belle du Jour", where she has already exercised and improved her glacial blonde side. Here, she goes a bit further, including a bit more of dissimulantion. Not only is she beautiful, but also, very effective as the woman who can dissimulate love. Jean Paul Belmondo plays a very different character from those he had been cast for. He is a bit silly and weak. So the whole relationship is dominated by her, once she is very strong and persuasive. One clear example of this is when they are buying a car. He is sure he wants the silver one, that would be more discreet, but she wants the red one... guess which one they buy! So, don't be fooled, this is a Catherine Deneuve's show. She is dazzingly in her Yves Saint-Laurent. She dominates the frames in every scene she is in! And even some she is out. Another thing, many people may not understand the difference between "tu" and "vous" in this film. It is not a mistake! The writer meant to show different periods in their relationship. When they are close --things are fine-- they use `tu', but sometimes they use `vous', particulary, after spending a time apart-- this means how distant from each other --as a strange -- they became. Truffaut's work is as always very effective and very creative. In the very beginning he does an homage to Jean Renoir, using some footage of his "La Marseillase" introducing Reunion Island. Although this film is meant to be a thriller, in the end, it is much more a love story. A tragic love story of a love that probably shouldn't have happened. We also have to notice how hidden and subtle the sexuality is, in this movie -- as in most of Truffaut's woks. Some of his films may be virtually sexless, but if you watch it very close, you will see sparkles of love everywhere. As a devoted fan of François Truffaut, every film he made, interests me. This "Mississipi Mermaid" makes no exeception. It is intriguing, interesting and disturbing. "Love hurts?", somebody asks in the film. "Yes, it does, when I look at you, you are so beautiful that hurts me. [...] it is a joy and a suffering". As most of his movies: they are a joy, but they also hurt us, once they show how human nature and love can be.
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