A Gorgeous Girl Like Me (1972) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by theriverjordan ★★★ 26

  Everything is Hollywood in “A Gorgeous Girl Like Me.” Even murder. Even sex.

  François Truffaut’s serial killer comedy is a playful romp through his particular obsessions of Western cinema and Hitchcockian deviousness. The plot follows a woman’s trail of death and chaos through a flashback series of jailhouse interviews.

  “Gorgeous” is deliberately hokey, and proud in its own lack of grace. Still, if Nouvelle Vague auteurs canonized the likes of Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk for hiding truth in excessive artifice, then “Gorgeous” perhaps has a heart beyond its overt harlotry.

  Mostly though, it’s quite a lot of harlotry.

  The way that Hitchcock had a knack for finding the most elegant of blonde victims, so Truffaut always had a tendency…

• Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  A mischievous comedy from director François Truffaut. A Gorgeous Girl Like Me is the story of a smart woman and some very stupid men. The film follows a sociologist who goes to a prison to conduct an interview with an inmate for his study on criminal women. The subject is the captivating Camille Bliss, and the film chronicles her attenpt to explain her incarnation through a series of contradictory flashbacks in which she recounts her interactions with the various men in her life and how she snared them with her good looks and feminine whiles. Bernadette Lafont is perfect in the lead; effectively the classic femme fatale but dressed up with a certain uncouth grace. She's clearly bad news, but…

• Review by Schratzi ★★★½ 3

  Francois Truffaut at his most playful, inconsequential and amusing.
  It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but, if nothing else, watch it for Bernadette Lafont, who’s a veritable firecracker and - yes, the title doesn’t lie - absolutely gorgeous. She’s an imprisoned murderess who tells her bizarre life story in flashback to a naive, young sociologist writing a thesis paper. What the poor schmuck doesn’t realise is that, like all the other men in her life, he‘ll succumb to her seductive charms and get entangled in her cunningly spun spiderweb from which there’s no escape.
  Lafont plays it loud, coarse, sexy and calculating and masters a real tightrope act by having us almost root for her criminal schemes, without ever…

• Review by Disgustipated ★★★½

  So, as you slip into your suit jacket, the one with the tweed elbow patches, you think to yourself, "I sure am one righteous scientific dude. I have my doctorate, I have my intellect and I have my dictaphone. I am Admiral Reason sailing the seven seas of chaos in the good ship, HMAS Empiricist. Unwaverable in my pursuit of truth, I am the master of my body's every desire, every impulse, every physical tic, tac and toe. Unlike the vulgar masses, I am never lead astray by the whims of my penis. My libido remains incognito, imprisoned within the confines of my underwear wherein it firmly remains, unflinchingly denied influence on the purity of my inviolable cognitive apparatus".

  And…

• Review by maneleeo ★★★★

  Today has been a long day, and nothing like a Truffaut film I have not yet seen to end it on a high note. He is so funny, and makes theses insane dramas disguised as love stories. I wish I could write more about this film but I'm just so tired and need to go to sleep.

• Review by feedingbrett ★★★★½ 1

  Review In A Nutshell:

  As directors, it is important for one to completely understand the character that is being explored, they need to show understanding and only from that understanding does one have the right to lay personal judgement on the subject. A Gorgeous Girl Like Me follows a sociologist, who is conducting an interview with a female prisoner, Camille Bliss, for a thesis he has on criminal women.

  His role is quite similar to a director's, he observes them and asks questions that hopefully would reveal profound answers that would stir the minds of those who are reading/listening. It was this connection that allowed a personal touch to be found in the protagonist, Stanislas Previne; seeing Truffaut in the…

• Review by nora ★★★½ 2

  a bulleted, unorganized list to pair with the anarchic energy of this movie:

  - listening to the opening credits music i was like "did truffaut use this whimsical ditty in another film?? why do i recognize it???" then after much contemplation i realized that it was used in FRANCES HA, which, like, of course it was lmao

  - the exact opposite of TWO ENGLISH GIRLS is probably a screwball romp, so it's so crazy to think that this is the movie he made immediately after. he wrote that TWO ENGLISH GIRLS was "a sorrowful film, possibly even wallowing in its own misery, but sincere, do believe me, to such a degree that i felt, afterwards, as a real need, i…

• Review by Adam ★★★

  François Truffaut Ranked

  One of François Truffaut’s lesser-known but intriguing films, blending dark comedy with crime drama.

  Truffaut plays with genre conventions, crafting a playful yet cynical narrative that satirizes male fascination with femme fatales. Bernadette Lafont shines in the lead role, exuding charisma and mischief, while the film’s lighthearted tone contrasts with its darker themes of deceit and murder. Though not as emotionally rich as The 400 Blows or as romantic as Jules and Jim, it offers an engaging mix of farce and thriller elements.

  While some may find its pacing uneven, A Gorgeous Girl Like Me remains a fun, subversive entry in Truffaut’s filmography, showcasing his love for cinema’s mischievous, independent women.

• Review by Torsten Matschiess 🌵 ★★★★½

  Ein verklemmter Soziologe mit Yves-Saint-Laurent-Frisur undaus besserem Hause will seine Dissertation über kriminelle Frauen schreiben und prompt verliebt er sich in seine erste und danach einzige Interviewpartnerin, die sich in Untersuchungshaft befindet und breitwillig über ihr Leben Auskunft gibt, dass uns immer wieder in Rückblenden gezeigt wird, bis es sich mit dem Leben des verständnisvollen Soziologen verquickt und er immer tiefer in ihren Sog gerät. Bereits zu Beginn erfahren wir, dass diese Doktorarbeit nie erscheinen wird.
  Stattdessen erzählt uns Herr Truffaut die Geschichte auf seine unnachahmliche Art, pointiert und mit Opfern ausschließlich aus der Gruppe der Schwächlinge - allesamt männlich.

  An uptight sociologist with a Yves Saint Laurent hairstyle and from a better family wants to write his dissertation on…

• Review by Adrian ☕🥐 ★★★★

  F. Truffaut #3 --- André Dussollier plays the sociologist Stanislas who writes his thesis on criminal women. The object of his study is Camille (Bernadette Lafont), a young woman who was imprisoned for pushing one of her lovers from the top of a tower. Une belle fille comme moi follows Stanislas, as he is interviewing Camille in jail. Unfortunately for him, he falls in love with her which makes it easy for her to use him like all the other men in her life.

  The film is a comedy with a very weird sense of humor. It's kinda over the top and ridiculous. But I found myself laughing a lot. The character of the catholic exterminator was the best. His…

• Review by James ★★★

  A Gorgeous Girl Like Me is Truffaut's attempt at black comedy, a sardonic farce of sexual manipulation and the male gaze, with an alluring central performance from Bernadette Lafont that is both infectiously charming and downright pessimistic.

  The laughs are honestly quite few and far between, with the odd piece of sharp dialogue or well staged slapstick providing entertainment, but the film is more fascinating than it is funny, the way that through flashbacks we see Camille using numerous men as a means to and end simply to get what she wants, whilst in the present a criminology student interviews the now incarcerated murderer, hoping to gain an intellectual understanding of her motives and mentality but quite obviously becoming infatuated…

• Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

  I assume Truffaut saw A Very Curious Girl and decided he could build a movie of similar energy around Bernadette Lafont. She is very enjoyable throughout this although the movie has no harder edges and its episodic structure can be uneven. Some of the morbid elements that can be on the periphery of Truffaut's work do pop up to complicate the scenario. It is a form of updated screwball from a mind that has more reverence than anarchy and would probably make for an interesting double bill with What's Up, Doc? There should be more Lafont unleashed movies out there so this is minor but valuable entry on Truffaut's filmography.