La Fiancée du Pirate

Kaplan's first feature is a cruel inversion of the Cinderella fable: the story of a 'pirate' woman, social outcast of a backbiting, bigoted provincial village, who takes her revenge by turning prostitute in order to seduce and blackmail her clients and oppressors into ruin. The mockery is harsh, despite the bright colours and playful tone: greed, malice and bigotry are satirised with merciless, atheistic scorn, and the final blow for sexual and social revenge is struck in the hamlet's church. Piggy eyes, once popping out of their sockets with lust, burn with hatred, while the heroine (the marvellous Lafont) dances off down the open road, leaving behind only a strange abstract sculpture of fridges, showers and bric-a-brac, as though thumbing her nose at the very possibility of marriage and homely virtue.