ABSTRACT
In the 1960 film la Vérité/The Truth, Brigitte Bardot plays a brooding young beauty on trial for the murder of her lover. As the jury is about to be empanelled, counsel for the accused asks his female assistant if the defendant will appear in the dock dressed in 'too tarty' a manner. 'Not at all,' she replies. 'But it's hard to make her look ugly.' In response, the advocate instructs his assistant to challenge each of the women called for jury service. And so we are given a brief scene in which a woman lawyer objects to all the potential women jurors in defence of the woman accused. If I add that the murder victim was the fiancé of the defendant's sister, and the son of an anguished mother also present in the courtroom, the spectacle of intra-female conflict comes into even sharper focus.
