Irma la Douce

In Irma la Douce, Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine are reunited, as they were in "The Apartment", but this time the film is set in Paris. Nestor Patou is a naive young policeman who is assigned to patrol the area around Rue Casanova, where many of the ladies of easy virtue ply their trade. Under normal circumstances the gendarmes, the girls, their clients and their pimps live together in perfect harmony, but Nestor wants to stamp out lawbreaking. Honesty, however, does not get you very far, as it turns out, when Nestor is promptly fired after launching a raid. Then the incredible happens: the next moment he is the pimp of a sweet streetwalker, Irma la Douce, who is seriously in love with him, as he is with her.

All could be joy and bliss, if only Nestor were not so jealous. He wants his sweetheart to himself, but how do you manage that when she insists on supporting him? Nestor comes up with a clever trick to put his idea into practice, but the trick does not bring only happiness.

Irma la Douce is partly a comedy of mistaken identity which, naturally, ends happily for the young couple. Lemmon and MacLaine are great assets to the film, which is a little slow to get going. It is clear that Wilder has adapted a musical, for the film resembles the genre in its simple story, leisurely pace and long set pieces. He would have done well to tighten the story, but he is very keen on building up the right atmosphere, even though it does not smell much of Paris. It is rather Hollywood's version of Paris. The film wavers between four and five stars.