A sociologist researching a book interviews murderess Camille, who tells him the story of her life. Put in a reform school as a child for suspected patricide, and later transferred to an orphanage, she escaped and tricked a young man called Clovis into marrying her. After attempting to kill Clovis' mother, she fled to Paris, where she began an affair with a night-club singer. Camille has left a trail of destruction and deceit in her wake, which now threatens to engulf the sociologist.

***

Francois Truffaut's 1973 film was meant as a tribute to Bernadette Lafont, who appeared in Truffaut's early short Les mistons and went on to become the Nouvelle vague's most memorable embodiment of earthy sexuality in such films as The Mother and the Whore and A Very Curious Girl. Here she's a country girl accused of assassinating a whole string of lovers; she tells her story to criminologist Andre Dussollier, who gradually falls under her spell as well. Lafont is lively and charming, yet the film seems little more than a remake of The Bride Wore Black in a strained comic mode; the hommages to Hitchcock and Hawks accrue at a rate that suggests Truffaut has no new thoughts of his own to bring to the subject.

Excerpt from Dave Kehr's review at The Chicago Reader located HERE