Come Dance with Me is as light as air; a comedic murder case with Brigitte Bardot trying to find the killer. She has to go undercover to do so and fortunately that is as a dance teacher and we get to see her mambo and twist. The mystery is ok, Bardot is better. She is gloriously glamorous here without even seeming to try to be. By 1959 Bardot was one of the biggest most photographed movie stars in the world followed by paparazzi every where she went. Magazine covers and gossip columns lived on her. It all started with a cover on Elle at 15 years-old and then an offer to try out for a film. Her parents were against it but the wise old grandfather famously said "If this little girl is to become a whore, cinema will not be the cause." Oh, granddad. She met Roger Vadim at the audition and they fell in love. When her parents again said no to marriage she stuck her head in an oven. Vadim was to direct her in his debut, And God Created Woman, which made her a star.  By the time of this film though they were divorced because of her affair with Jean-Louis Trintignant and others that followed. It was a messy personal life but grist for the press.


The film moves along as smoothly as a French ballad. Virginie's (Bardot) father (Noël Roquevert) has a bad tooth and they go to see a dentist and over the drilling Virginie and Hervé (Henri Vidal) fall in love. She is engaged but so what. They are soon married. And fight. After one she leaves him and he goes out to have a drink and is nearly seduced by Anita (Dawn Addams) in her apartment. She owns a dance studio. She is also a blackmailer and her cohort photographs Hervé and Anita in a compromising position before he comes to his senses and leaves. Her cohort is the great Serge Gainsbourg who at this point was an artistic failure but in the years to come he became a famous composer, singer and provocateur. He was also later to collaborate with Bardot on some music and became her lover.




Hervé goes to the studio to confront Anita and finds her dead. Virginie is there too having eavesdropped on a conversation and thinking her husband was having an affair. They escape but with all the evidence pointing at her husband she decides to find the killer. And she is adorable doing it getting a job at the studio, spreading lies among the suspects, snooping around, confusing and charming the Inspector and going into the Blue Fetish, a gay and transvestite bar. The camera just revels in Bardot, her famous figure but even more so her impish pouty face with that slow grin. She had played as Helen in Helen of Troy two years earlier and it was perfect casting. The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships.