Review of Naughty Arlette

It's easy to see through characters like the teenage French flirt played by Mai Zetterling, so chipper and friendly on the outside, yet constantly scheming and twirling her hands together as if the most beautiful witch, the kind that Zetterling would be out to expose and destroy in the cult 1990 film starring Angelica Houston. The faculty doesn't take new professor Hugh Williams' warnings about her seriously, and apparently neither does he. She's disruptive in the class, attention seeking and a bad influence on the other girls (particularly Petula Clark as Williams' daughter), so when he begins to fall for her phony charms, it becomes an instant eye rolling moment. Only a fool would fall for her antics and sympathize with her past as a motive for her behavior, and Williams is not a fool.

With a perfect wife (Margot Graham) and a nice daughter, there's no reason other than a case of instant stupidity for Williams to fall into her spider's trap. She's a completely one dimensional character, and after a while, the French accent of the Swedish born Zetterling becomes annoyingly cartoonish, and not in a fun phony Russian or eastern European accent that actresses like Eve Arden, Nita Talbot or Marian Mercer would adapt. The direction and script are to blame, and more subtlety would have greatly aided Zetterling's performance. A great production design helps as does the desire to see Arlette get her comeuppance.