Review of Irma la Douce (1963) by Ryan H — 17 Apr 2010

I love movies where I keep feeling that I should hate what the characters are doing, but it's yelling at me and telling me their actions are acceptable. I guess for this one I am just too bourgeois.

It's a fun movie all the way through. All the antics made me feel like I was watching a 2 1/2 hour looney tunes episode. However, for I.A.L Diamond and Billy Wilder, the writing is very weak. Jack Lemmon plays Nester, who starts out as a man who wants nothing other than to be a straight cop.

He saved a kid from drowning and is moved to a different location: Paris. But in this specific location of Paris prostitutes can be found on a street and the pimps bribe the cops to let them do their jobs.

To make a hilarious but long story short, Nester gets fired for arresting all of the prostitutes. But during this time he meets and falls for Irma La Douce (that's Irma the Sweet, we all know why she's called that withing seconds).

Nester and Irma form a relationship, and after a turn of events, he becomes her pimp. With Nester being a good guy he is trying to find ways to keep her off the streets, but all Irma wants to do is support her man.

The problem with the movie comes in the emotional climax. Nester completely changes what he would have normally done simply to move the plot forward. Irma gets jealous because he's gone all morning and sleeps all day, which makes her thinks he is with another woman.

The truth is, he's making money for the plan to keep her off the streets. One morning she catches him coming in and they argue. Instead of him being honest (and at this point it makes sense for his character to be honest), he's sarcastic, which we've never seen from Nester before, and by the end he slaps her.

Everything that his character does here comes from left field. And we thought we knew him well enough by this point. Aside from this huge and fatal flaw of the film, I was still entertained and laughed through most of it.

The ending also felt like it was dragging on. I feel like they could have found a quicker way to wrap things up. However, I would still recommend a viewing for all Wilder and Lemmon fans.