Plucking the Daisy           

Aka - Mam'selle Striptease and Please Mr Balzac

The Daisy is of course Brigitte Bardot. And very pluckable, she is. 1956 was a very good year for her and by the end of it, she was an international star. She had already been in over ten films by 1956, even starring in the slightly risqué (for its time) The Girl in the Bikini and appeared in an English speaking film, Doctor at Sea, but she moved into the mainstream in 1956 with a series of light comedies with just a pinch of sex appeal in Naughty Girl, Plucking the Daisy, Her Bridal Night and then And God Created Woman. At the beginning of the year, she was in Helen of Troy and amazingly was not Helen, only her slave, but by the end God Created Woman made her a worldwide star and a symbol of sex appeal. Part of her success was thanks to her husband Roger Vadim, whom she had married in 1952 at 18-years-old. He wrote the scripts for Naughty Girl and this film and then directed her in God Created Woman. She paid him back by having an affair with her leading man Jean-Louis Trintignant in that film which ended their marriage.


Time has not done this film any favors. It feels a little creepy and sexist, but back in 1956 it was just a sweet playful comedy that would not raise an eyebrow or a pursed mouth. Time and changing attitudes as we know can sour any film. The first half for me was a charming piffle with Brigitte getting all the screen time and looking like an ice cream cone, but then I thought it took a wrong turn that had no real purpose other than adding some sexual tease to the film which got tiresome fairly quickly. Not that Bardot could ever be tiresome. But the other characters are. Here, she is the teenage daughter of a respected General whose little boy calls him a martinet. A novel has been published that has raised the hackles of the town as it delves into their secrets. The author is anonymous but Brigitte admits to having written it. Her father is aghast and tries to ship her off to a convent before it comes out who the author is. But she hops on another train heading to Paris where she plans to stay with her older brother who has written the family that he has made it big as a painter and lives in a beautiful house.


The last part of that turns out to be true but it isn't his house - it is the Balzac museum where he works and which our girl doesn't notice. She breaks in, makes herself at home in her brother's absence and sells one of the rare books - thinking it is his - for a substantial amount of money. On the train she had met two men - a journalist and a photographer. One of them is a nice, shy guy around women; the other Daniel is a player making it with every woman he meets - kissing them in the office and seducing them. Who does she fall for? Of course, the player who oozes toxicity but again times have changed.


When she realizes that the book she sold was not her brother's, she needs to buy it back. How to make enough money? Win a strip contest of course. With a mask on. A few of the girls in the contest get naked - not Brigitte. Daniel falls for the masked stripper - Brigitte in tears tells her friend, this is terrible he is cheating on me with me. Her friend by the way is played by Bond Girl, Luciana Paluzzi in an early role. The film just lost me once it got to Daniel and the stripping. She goes from this feisty independent girl who wrote a book and came to Paris on her own and by the end just wants to be his wife after a week of knowing him. And thinks he will be faithful to her.

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