Plucking the Daisy () is a 1956 French comedy film directed by Marc Allégret and starring Brigitte Bardot.
It was also known as Mam'selle Striptease and Please Mr Balzac. (Also known as "Mademoiselle Striptease" and often confused with 1957 French film "Mademoiselle Strip-tease")
Turner Classic Movies called it "a typical French romantic comedy... complete with a meet-cute on a train, and plenty of loving shots of Bardot's pert behind.... typical of the suggestive but innocuous films that Bardot made early in her career."
Plot
General Dumont discovers that his daughter Agnes is "A.D.", author of a scandalous under-the-counter novel.
He tries to send her to a convent but she escapes to Paris to live with her brother. On the train she meets Daniel, a journalist. Agnes thinks her brother is a rich artist but he's actually a poor guide in the Balzac Museum.
Agnes needs money and enters an amateur striptease contest. Daniel is covering the contest for his magazine.
Cast
Brigitte Bardot as Agnès Dumont
Daniel Gélin as Daniel Roy
Robert Hirsch as Roger Vital
Darry Cowl as Hubert Dumont
Luciana Paluzzi as Sofia
Nadine Tallier as Magali
Jacques Dumesnil as General Dumont
Madeleine Barbulée as Mme Dumont
Georges Chamarat as Bacchus
Mischa Auer as Alexis
Mauricet as Mr. Valentin
Yves-Marie Maurin as Toto
Patrick Maurin as Agnès' younger brother
Jacques Jouanneau as Edouard
Henri Garcin as one of Daniel's friends
Jean-Loup Philippe as one of Daniel's friends
Michel Constantin as Un spectateur du strip-tease
Marc Eyraud as a photographer
Françoise Arnoul as herself
Production
Roger Vadim had just written a movie which launched Bardot as a leading lady, Naughty Girl. He called this movie "a hack job based on an 'original idea' by the producer which was anything but original... I changed the plot and wrote an amusing, romantic and sexy story."
Reception
In 1956, the film was the 20th most popular of the year, at the French box office. It was released before Bardot's film And God Created Woman, which was the 13th most popular and Naughty Girl which was 12th.
It was released in the US as Mademoiselle Striptease. The Washington Post called it "one of the nicest comedies of the summer." The Los Angeles Times called it "a most delightful, naughty and very funny comedy... Bardot strikes pure gold... it's strictly a fun show that doesn't try to prove a thing."
It was also released in the US as Please Mr Balzac. The New York Times said the "sole excuse for this singularly unfrothy and unfunny romantic comedy is Brigitte Bardot....[a] thin, old-fashioned, slightly smutty and extremely dull charade... The picture is pretty awful. It needn't have been."