Truffaut is at his most atypical with this black comedy about a young woman (Lafont, gleefully raucous) rising from rural rags to richly ironic celebrity by means of murder, deceit and ruthless, repeated seduction. The movie revels in bad taste, yet Camille’s progress towards prison and beyond recalls Renoir’s Boudu... in exposing the hypocrisy, corruption, vanity and gullibility of the men she encounters en route.
