This is a particularly interesting film in relation to Bardot's star image. It portrays her as a little slut (she's had sex before marriage - cue shocked gasp from the courtroom) on trial for the murder of her lover. In many ways, the film thus acts out what many in France would like to have done - put BB on trial for her sexual promiscuity, her modernity, and her 'youthful' values. The film emphasises Bardot/ Dominique (the character is effectively overshadowed by the star who plays her) as sexual, modern, promiscious, flighty, idle, a spendthrift, all at odds with the uptight bourgeois ruling class. The film is a fascinating glimpse into the values that preoccupied the French bourgeoisie at the turn of the decade, with its emphasis on the students of the Latin Quarter as a drop out counter culture compared to the good youth learning traditional music at the Conservatoire. Not so much a generation clash, then, more one group rooted in tradition versus another embracing modernity and new models of behaviour. The film is sometimes unwittingly hysterical as it has dated so much, and it does not so much end as fizzle out, but in its depiction of a youthful counter culture it anticipates the events of May 1968 nearly a decade before they occur. BB may have lost the particular battle in this film, but she went on to win the war.
