La Parisienne (original French title: Une Parisienne) is a 1957 French comedy film directed by Michel Boisrond.
Brigitte Laurier (Brigitte Bardot) is the spoiled and silly daughter of the President of France. She is in love with his chief of staff, Michel Legrand (Henri Vidal). Michel is a womanizer who's not indifferent to Brigitte, but he doesn't want to get involved with his boss' daughter and rejects her advances. After some shenanigans during a hunting trip, the President finds Brigitte in bed with Michel and forces the two to marry to avoid a scandal. Brigitte believes Michel will cheat on her sooner or later, which isn't helped by the fact that a Mrs. Wilson keeps calling up Michel. Brigitte decides she will cheat on him in return, and chooses the visiting Prince Charles (Charles Boyer) to seduce.
Tropes:
- Cassandra Truth: At the end, Brigitte truthfully admits to Michel that she went to Nice with Charles, but as Michel had confronted the prince earlier and he claimed that he had been sick in his room all day, Michel doesn't believe her no matter how much Brigitte insists. So she instead lies that she was at the movies with a friend, which Michel believes.
- Fictional Country: It's never revealed what country Queen Greta and Prince Charles are heads of state of. Its hymn sounds oddly like "Amazing Grace".
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Queen Greta and her consort Charles are fictional and come from an unspecified country, but it's rather obvious that they were inspired by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.
- No Guy Wants to Be Chased: When Brigitte is pulled over by a police officer for speeding while chasing Michel, her explanation is that she is going after the man she loves. The police officer tells her that's a good way of losing him.
- Operation: Jealousy: Brigitte's seduction of Charles is at least subconsciously designed to make Michel jealous. Charles figures as much and says so to Brigitte in their one date together, after which they decide to call the whole thing off and Brigitte goes back to Michel.
- Sexy Secretary: Brigitte convinced her father to let her work as Michel's secretary, clearly hoping to invoke this trope. She teases Michel by leaving her blouse unbuttoned as he dictates something to her and then forces him to look for a pencil she dropped inside it.
- Shotgun Wedding: Brigitte and Michel are forced to marry each other after her father and his staff find them in bed together, so as to avoid a scandal (they did not have sex but that ultimately doesn't matter).
- Shout-Out: Brigitte sings the first line of the French dub version of "Someday My Prince Will Come" to taunt Michel about Prince Charles.
- Untranslated Title: Though they clearly thought it was important to replace the indefinite article (Une) with a definite one (La).
