In Roger Vadim's directorial debut, his then-wife, Brigitte Bardot, plays Juliette, a sumptuous orphan beauty who sparks an incendiary and erotically charged love triangle between herself and three men who desire her. Spending her days barefoot and barely working in the town tabac, Juliette loves to listen to the jukebox at the local bar and saunter past the men in town; all the while, she has eyes only for local thug Antoine. Millionaire Eric Carradine desires Juliette as much as he desires Antoine's family's oceanfront property. After being coldly spurned by Antoine, Juliette is rescued from a return to the orphanage when Antoine's timid younger brother, Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), proposes marriage, at the suggestion of Carradine. As the unlikely couple works hard at achieving a semblance of happiness, the dark forces that dwell inside Juliette's restless spirit force her closer and closer to Antoine. Vadim lets Bardot revel in the CinemaScope and Technicolor beauty of the film, and the simmering mambo-infused soundtrack traces the plot's erotic undercurrents as they drive all the characters toward an inevitable climax of erotic and violent explosion, personal revelation, and a New Wave definition of love and romance.
