Jail Bait

By JAY COCKS

SUCH A GORGEOUS KID LIKE ME

Directed by FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT

Screenplay by JEAN-LOUP DABADIE and FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT

Light, whimsical, diverting on the surface, this sleek recreation by Franc,ois Truffaut is deceptively sweet--like a fondant filled with vitriol. The gorgeous kid of the title is Camille Bliss (BernadetteLafont), another of the coyly annihilating heroines who have haunted Truffaut's work since the incomparable Jules and Jim (1961). These women tease men, taunt them, stalk them, until, as in The Mississippi Mermaid (1969), and as here, the men are so enmeshed in their own obsession that they become grateful, impassioned prisoners.

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me gives this destructive dynamic still another odd twist. Truffaut makes Camille look and sound like a tomboy version of the ragamuffin youngsters who populate such chapters of his cinematic autobiography as Bed and Board. Camille's innocence, however, is chiding, manipulative, a weapon wielded with instinctual skill against a battery of eager victims.

Truffaut's playful misogyny gives the movie a nice cutting edge, but it also unhinges it, quite as thoroughly as the hapless hero (Andre Dussollier) is eventually unhinged by Camille. A bookish, earnest, timid sociologist writing a thesis on criminal women, Dussollier interviews Camille in prison and becomes enraptured by her exploits; his scholarly dispassion buckles as she relates her history of adultery, theft and even--perhaps--murder. He becomes her vicarious paramour, and her champion, determined to prove her innocent of the murder of a lover (Charles Denner). She is, through his strenuous dedication, finally acquitted. But he soon finds himself implicated in the death of Camille's husband. Camille could save him, but only by incriminating herself. She declines, of course. By this time the sociologist, in jail, is almost beyond caring. He is beguiled now by her guilt and his own gullibility.

Truffaut displays his distinctive and exuberant virtuosity; the film is briskly and surely made. The actors are fine, especially Denner, as a notably intense exterminator, and Guy Marchand, as a sleazy vocalist called Sam Golden who sports an extensive wardrobe of Damon Runyon gangster duds. But Bernadette Lafont can never find quite the proper combination of artfulness and amorality as Camille. She has an easy, unforced, energetic sexuality, but her ruthlessness does not seem to suit her. She tries too hard to act it, perhaps because it was never fully there in the script, which is concerned more with gymnastics of plot than thorough characterization. Truffaut's own attitude toward Camille is clearer, but still ambivalent. He treats her with a mingling of savagery and bemused resignation, an attitude that makes finally for a curious but lopsided film.

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