Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
When a recently fired policeman falls in love with a French prostitute, he doesn't want her to be with other men, so he creates an alter-ego in order to become her only customer.
Billy Wilder's long but charming comedy benefits enormously from the reteaming of Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, both delivering charismatic, committed performances that elevate fairly thin material. The premise is clever and the Parisian atmosphere is well-rendered on studio sets by Joseph LaShelle, though the film runs overlong at nearly three hours and the plot mechanics grow repetitive in the second half. The ending is crowd-pleasing but conventional. As a Wilder comedy it has personality, but it lacks the razor-sharp wit of Some Like It Hot or The Apartment, making it a solid but not exceptional entry in his filmography.