Due prostitute a Pigalle

Blonde Marie (Catherine Deneuve) and brunette Pauline (Bernadette Lafont) share an apartment, working as prostitutes by day and in the floor show of a seedy night club by night. Unknown to Marie, her room-mate is involved with a musician at the club who leads a gang that has kidnapped the ex-opera singer wife of a government minister for ransom. Though the police fail to find her, a retired policeman who has befriended the girls cracks the musical code used by the victim to attract rescuers (a not-new trope, seen for example in Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much").

I won't recount any more of the plot since, despite two beautiful Frenchwomen and a talented Hungarian as director, all three having been in some of the best French films of the previous decade, it is the scenario that in my view lets them down. Stretches of vivid dialogue, colourful character acting and picturesque locations do not in themselves a good movie make. Though the two lovely girls were always a joy to watch.