Papa, les Petits Bateaux = Papa the Little Boats

Venus de Palma (also known as Cookie) is a tough, sweet little rich girl, and is rather smart, too. She is smart enough and charming enough to outwit her kidnappers by setting one against the other until they have all killed each other or died trying to prove their worth to her. Kaplan was a journalist and assistant to Abel Gance before starting to make her own films, including several shorts on painters. She has also written surrealist/erotic novels under the name of Belen, and worked for television. Her claim to fame is her firts feature ‘La fiancee du pirate/Dirty Mary’ (1969), a key film in early femisnist film debates. (…) Kaplan subsequent films have been less successful, perhaps because her libertarian sensitivity became outmoded, but they have been consistently interesting if not controversial: for instance ‘Nea’ (1976), an attempt at soft porn from a woman’s point of view, and ‘Plaisir d’amour’ (1991), a tale of three women (grandmother, mother and daughter) who exhaust a man sexually.’ Reference: Ginette Vincendeau. ‘The companion to French cinema’. London: BFI Publishing, 1996

Credits: Director, Nelly Kaplan ; writers, Nelly Kaplan, Claude Makovski, Rene Guyonnet ; photography, Ricardo Aronovich ; music, Andre Popp.
Cast: Sheila White, Michel Bouquet, Judith Magre, Jean Paredes, Sydney Chaplin, Michel Lonsdale, Pierre Mondy, Catherine Allegret.