For maybe the first, I don't know, 45/50 minutes, I was with it as much as I was any of the major Billy Wilder films from the period right before this (take your pick - Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, One-Two-Three, and then from the early 50's which I'll count as part of his time making some of the sharpest, cynical but truest comedies ever, often with romance or a jaundiced view, so far as the Code allowed or he could squeeze through). There's the set up of the One Honest Cop put on the beat of the red light district (sort of) in Paris, and he immediately hauls in the street-walkers, but there's one, the Irma of the title, who thinks he's actually a swell enough guy.
Then he gets into a bar fight with her louse of a pimp (and damn is that a hilarious/entertaining fight, among those you never forget from the movies, serious, it's as good in its way as anything in, I don't know, Road House). And then a relationship is kindled and a scene like the one between Nestor and Irma when she first brings him up to her place and they slowly but surely get into bed - the kind of scene that Wilder excels at, full of sly humor and innuendo but it's all bare-naked and honest too, and this romance seems like it could lead to a story about feminism and sexual identity (no, really) and how MacLaine's character is being independent while in that "Oldest Profession" and what Lemmon's character is going to do about it....
And then the plot really kicks in, which is one of those plots where a lie leads to another and another and another, but instead of having some satire to it, or at least something I could cling to, it's a farce. It's an idiot rom-com plot. You know the kind, right? It's where you look at a character and repeatedly say, 'you're an idiot', and in a way that really means to say, 'hey, guy, you should know better, right? No? Alright, let's see where this goes.' I was even still with it up until about 2/3rds of the way in (is that the 100 minute mark, who knows) when the farce is taken to a whole other level. I won't say any other details, but it goes into such an area that I gave up thinking of this as any kind of reality.
My issue with this movie, which is given its all by Lemmon as he eventually is playing two "characters", one of course Nestor, who is what we usually think of as a Lemmon character type (nice but quick to react and overblow things and give just the right expression), and the other "Lord X", which is basically the Monopoly guy with a heavy-duty accent (which I guess he pulls off well, but...) I don't even know if this IS Wilder being cynical about society after a while - there's certainly a message in here about what love and being protective of a person does to someone, as Nestor is set up as being such a nice guy it's to a fault, and with such a spunky woman as Irma who... one would think is smarter than the plot that comes upon her (and I suspend disbelief a lot, I have to, but there's one point even I think to myself 'Uh... wouldn't she be able to tell by a certain *organ* in the process of... oh, nevermind).
It speaks to how good Lemmon and MacLaine are in the roles, as is the guy playing the bartender that this is still a watchable movie and sometimes they bring out humor by their reactions and excellent timing (the pimp who first has Irma and gets into that barfight and then becomes a fink is not so good an actor, but I can let it slide after a while). And yet this is a 'like' and recommendation that is sort of tepid or tamped down; it may be expectations of Wilder during this period.
There's so much promise here, and maybe some of my disappointment comes back to the source material - and while Wilder has a lot of great sets and locations in Paris to use (the most effective to me are the actual slaughterhouses and markets and places Nestor works at at night as part of his behind-Irma's-back scheme), it feels stagey - so it may all just be part of expectations being so high. But something feels... off here, that there's a tonal thing where there's a sense of reality to how MacLaine plays it and then how everyone else (including Lemmon) is treating it as farce.
Or, simply, when it comes to this sort of farce, especially where it leads to, I don't buy it, no matter how sharply directed or the comic timing works (and there's always good set pieces here, even late in the movie where the cops are searching an apartment and a character finds a way to "hide" in plain sight). Or, further, I've seen too many kinds of plots like this in a romantic comedy where a character could end so much of the nonsense by having an actual damn conversation. Though this may be part of Wilder's point, I don't know if it's effective, at least on a first viewing.
So call this a 'good' watch, but too long and too stuffed with 'idiot plot moves' to call it totally successful.
Then he gets into a bar fight with her louse of a pimp (and damn is that a hilarious/entertaining fight, among those you never forget from the movies, serious, it's as good in its way as anything in, I don't know, Road House). And then a relationship is kindled and a scene like the one between Nestor and Irma when she first brings him up to her place and they slowly but surely get into bed - the kind of scene that Wilder excels at, full of sly humor and innuendo but it's all bare-naked and honest too, and this romance seems like it could lead to a story about feminism and sexual identity (no, really) and how MacLaine's character is being independent while in that "Oldest Profession" and what Lemmon's character is going to do about it....
And then the plot really kicks in, which is one of those plots where a lie leads to another and another and another, but instead of having some satire to it, or at least something I could cling to, it's a farce. It's an idiot rom-com plot. You know the kind, right? It's where you look at a character and repeatedly say, 'you're an idiot', and in a way that really means to say, 'hey, guy, you should know better, right? No? Alright, let's see where this goes.' I was even still with it up until about 2/3rds of the way in (is that the 100 minute mark, who knows) when the farce is taken to a whole other level. I won't say any other details, but it goes into such an area that I gave up thinking of this as any kind of reality.
My issue with this movie, which is given its all by Lemmon as he eventually is playing two "characters", one of course Nestor, who is what we usually think of as a Lemmon character type (nice but quick to react and overblow things and give just the right expression), and the other "Lord X", which is basically the Monopoly guy with a heavy-duty accent (which I guess he pulls off well, but...) I don't even know if this IS Wilder being cynical about society after a while - there's certainly a message in here about what love and being protective of a person does to someone, as Nestor is set up as being such a nice guy it's to a fault, and with such a spunky woman as Irma who... one would think is smarter than the plot that comes upon her (and I suspend disbelief a lot, I have to, but there's one point even I think to myself 'Uh... wouldn't she be able to tell by a certain *organ* in the process of... oh, nevermind).
It speaks to how good Lemmon and MacLaine are in the roles, as is the guy playing the bartender that this is still a watchable movie and sometimes they bring out humor by their reactions and excellent timing (the pimp who first has Irma and gets into that barfight and then becomes a fink is not so good an actor, but I can let it slide after a while). And yet this is a 'like' and recommendation that is sort of tepid or tamped down; it may be expectations of Wilder during this period.
There's so much promise here, and maybe some of my disappointment comes back to the source material - and while Wilder has a lot of great sets and locations in Paris to use (the most effective to me are the actual slaughterhouses and markets and places Nestor works at at night as part of his behind-Irma's-back scheme), it feels stagey - so it may all just be part of expectations being so high. But something feels... off here, that there's a tonal thing where there's a sense of reality to how MacLaine plays it and then how everyone else (including Lemmon) is treating it as farce.
Or, simply, when it comes to this sort of farce, especially where it leads to, I don't buy it, no matter how sharply directed or the comic timing works (and there's always good set pieces here, even late in the movie where the cops are searching an apartment and a character finds a way to "hide" in plain sight). Or, further, I've seen too many kinds of plots like this in a romantic comedy where a character could end so much of the nonsense by having an actual damn conversation. Though this may be part of Wilder's point, I don't know if it's effective, at least on a first viewing.
So call this a 'good' watch, but too long and too stuffed with 'idiot plot moves' to call it totally successful.