Mississippi Mermaid

Mississippi Mermaid French La sirne du Mississipi is a 1969 French romantic drama film directed by Franois Truffaut and starring Catherine Deneuve and JeanPaul Belmondo. Adapted from the 1947 novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich, the film is about a tobacco planter on Runion island in the Indian Ocean who becomes engaged through correspondence to a woman he does not know. When she arrives it is not the same woman in the photo, but he marries her anyway. Filmed in southern France and Runion island, Mississippi Mermaid was the 17th highest grossing film of the year in France with a total of 1,221,027 admissions. It was remade in 2001 as Original Sin, directed by Michael Cristofer and starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas.

Louis and Julie quickly marry, and his adoration of his new bride makes him overlook inconsistencies with what she wrote in her letters. He gives Julie access to his bank accounts and prints her image on the cigarette packs his company manufactures. After receiving an angry letter from Julies sister, Berthe Roussel Nelly Borgeaud, demanding to know the whereabouts of Julie, Louis returns home to find that Julie is gone, and that shes absconded with nearlymillion francs, all but emptying his bank accounts. Soon after, Julies sister Berthe arrives and informs him that the woman he married was not Julie and that she saw her sister board the Mississipi. They hire a private detective, Comolli, to track down the impostor and bring her to justice.On a flight to Nice, France, Louis suddenly collapses from exhaustion. While recuperating in the Clinique Heurtebise sanitarium, he sees Julies impostor on television, dancing at a nightclub in Antibes. He buys a gun and travels to Antibes where he breaks in to her room at the Hotel Monorail, intent on killing her. When she returns and is confronted by Louis, she offers no resistance. Explaining that her real name is Marion Vergano, she tells him of her sordid past of the years she spent in prison and of her association with a heartless gangster, Richard, who was with her on the Mississipi. She recounts that when they met Julie Roussel and learned of her forthcoming marriage, Richard fabricated a plot to kill Julie and send Marion in her place to rob Louis. Afterwards Richard forced her to go through with the robbery and then abandoned her. She tells Louis that she still loves him, and Louis forgives her. ........

Source: Wikipedia