Mississippi Mermaid
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mississippi Mermaid (1969) is a French film directed by François Truffaut. The film is adapted from the 1947 William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) novel Waltz into Darkness. The film features Jean-Paul Belmondo, Catherine Deneuve, and others.
The 2001 film Original Sin, directed by Michael Cristofer, is a remake of it, featuring Antonio Banderas, Angelina Jolie and Thomas Jane.
Plot
Truffaut juggles an Hitchcockian suspense/thriller with deepening sexual obsession. Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) owns a tobacco plantation and cigarette factory on Réunion Island, but it's lonely work — so he sends away for a mail-order bride.
Much to his surprise, the beautiful young Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve) arrives by ship (the Mississippi Mermaid of the title), looking nothing like the picture he had received by mail. Louis quickly falls for Julie, while discovering that she is decidedly not the woman with whom he had been corresponding.
