Irma La Douce

Plot Summary

This romantic comedy opens with a resounding warning: its chief concerns are passion, bloodshed, desire, and death. "Everything," exclaims the narrator, "that makes life worth living." Irma La Douce (Shirley MacClaine) wise, endearing, and compulsively clad in green rules the rue Casanova as Paris' most prosperous prostitute. She exultantly works the most coveted corner as cops gladly look the other way and the naughty johns leave tips. Her street is a content community of live and let live and good-natured desire, an Augean stable of human understanding. However, to the area's new policeman, upright Nester Patou (Jack Lemmon), genial wrongdoing is still wrongdoing. Newly promoted from day patrol at a children's playground, the scrupulous Nestor arrests Irma and her colleagues in a bumbling, unauthorized raid. He takes pity on Irma, but harasses the guilty johns — including the police captain. Promptly unemployed, Nester returns to the scene of his crime, the rue, and to Irma. Nester unwittingly takes the position as her pimp after physically besting him. As the two fall madly in love, Nestor begins to grow jealous of Irma's patrons. Thus, he masquerades as a wealthy English aristocrat and becomes Irma's sole customer — only to eventually grow violently jealous of himself. Soon enough, this formally righteous cop is comically jailed for his own brutal murder! As the film's prologue promises, Irma La Douce is a celebration of life from beginning to end — unabashedly adoring lust, emotion, fervor and, above all, foolish love.