Les Petits matins (1962)
Directed by Jacqueline Audry

Film Review

In the landscape of post-war French cinema Jacqueline Audry was that rarest of creatures, a woman film director.  A decade before the French New Wave, she was blazing a trail as an independently minded film auteur, courting controversy with her female-oriented works which include a daring portrayal of a lesbian love affair between a school girl and her headmistress (Olivia, 1951).  It was Audry who gave us the first screen adaptation of Colette's novel Gigi, nine years before the glitzier Hollywood musical version, as well as several other adaptations of famous literary works.  Underrated and overlooked in her own lifetime, Audry is virtually forgotten today, but whilst she may not have been the most inspired of filmmakers the fact that she managed to make her mark in a male-dominated industry earns her a place in the pantheon of French film directors.

Les Petits matins (a.k.a. Mademoiselle Stop) is one of Audry's lesser works, a lightweight comedy structured as a road movie in which a totally unknown actress (Agathe Aems, a professional model) encounters a seemingly interminable string of famous French film actors as she travels from Belgium to the French Rivera.  The film would be totally without interest were it not for the incredible mass of talent that Audry somehow managed to shoehorn into it, with the great French chansonnier Charles Aznavour providing the gorgeously evocative theme song 'Les petits matins', which is probably the best thing about the whole crazy concoction.

Right from the outset the heroine (Aems) succeeds in alienating herself from the audience, overplaying the role of the independent modern young miss who uses all of her feminine guiles to deceive, exploit and humiliate every man who dares to cross her path with lascivious intent.  Admittedly, most of these men - middle-aged lechers who range from the pathetic (Bernard Blier, François Périer) to the downright creepy (Darry Cowl, Robert Hossein) - deserve what they get, but some (Gilbert Bécaud, Noël-Noël),  manage to steal our sympathies and we end up despising the heroine even more.  Castration is never a pretty sight.   

It is hard to know what Audry's intention was - to support or lampoon cinema's portrayal of female emancipation - but whatever her intention the film can still be enjoyed as a good-natured comedy which is refreshingly untainted by the pretensions of the Nouvelle Vague.  No other French film offers such an impressive roll-call of talent - the opening credits read like a comprehensive Who's Who of French cinema - and for this reason alone the film has stood the test of time.  Where else can you hope to encounter a gathering of stars of the calibre of Arletty, Lino Ventura, Daniel Gélin, Pierre Brasseur, Claude Rich and Jean-Claude Brialy, all happily taking the Mickey out of themselves for our amusement?  Les Petits matins is far from being a grand classique but it is a pleasing nostalgia piece that evokes the mood of its time (the early 1960s) with effortless élan.

Film Synopsis

Agathe, a young Belgian secretary, is looking forward to her two weeks' holiday by the sea, but when the Belgian weather turns bad she takes the advice of a total stranger and heads off for the Côte d'Azur, hoping that at her journey's end she will meet her Prince Charming.  Unfortunately, her adventure will be very different from what she had imagined and she will learn that people do not always act through the best intentions.  She graciously accepts a dinner invitation from an older man at a posh restaurant but makes a hasty retreat when she realises what he has planned in the way of after dinner entertainment.   Next, she falls for a handsome airline pilot.  He offers to take her to Nice, but it is obvious that the price of her ticket will be more than she is willing to pay.  So, it's back to the open road, and Agathe is still confident that, in spite of everything, love and happiness await her on the Riviera...