124 - Stolen Kisses, 1968, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

124 - Stolen Kisses, 1968, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

The following words have been used to describe Francois Truffaut's film Stolen Kisses.

Romantic.  Charming.  Full of love.  Light-hearted.  A religious experience.  Lyrical.  Lovely.  Gentle.  Sweet.  Fine.  Affable.  Human.  Universal.  Explosively funny.  Pricelessly funny.  Humanistically complex.  Classically Ordered.  Warm.  Having cinematic grace.

We first met Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows (1959).  He was 12 years old, having trouble in school, trouble at home, trouble with the snitch, and trouble at the delinquent center.

His freeze-framed face launched the Nouvelle Vague--10 months before Jean-Paul Belmondo burst onto the screen as Michel Poiccard in Breathless.

We saw him again in Antoine and Colette (1962), at age 17.  He experienced first love.  And first loss.

Now meet Antoine Doinel again.

Twenty-something.

Soldier.  Hotel clerk.  Private detective.  TV repairman.

Failure at all of them.

He begins the film in the brig.

And the commanding officer is more than happy to grant his request to leave the army.

Without an honorable discharge.

With his newfound freedom he runs through the streets of Paris directly to a brothel.

He has been in the army for three years.  He is pent up.

The first woman is fussy.  Forget it.

The second woman . . .

He goes to his girlfriend's parent's house.  She is out skiing with her friends.

Her father can get him a job.

He works as a night clerk at a hotel.

Christine comes to visit him.  He is happy.

Two men come in a rush.  He needs to let them in a room.

He lets them in.

Oops.

He fell for it.  A husband and private detective have railroaded him.  To get to the wife.  To get evidence.

The manager sacks him.  Sends him on his way.

The private detective talks to him at a café.  Feels bad about it.  Gets him a job at the agency.

Antoine is a private detective.

And a bad one.

He tries to follow people but they see him.

He tries to follow people but they lose him.

These sequences alone are worth the price of admission.

Christine herself starts to avoid him.

In steps Georges Tabard.

He owns a shoe store.  He has come to the detective agency to ask for help.  Suspected infidelity?  No.  Theft?  No.  Embezzlement?  No.

Why does no one love me?

What!

You came to a detective agency for that?

Why not a psychologist?

He refuses to sit on a couch.

They assign Antoine to the case.

He will work undercover at the shoe store.

He will find out why no one loves M. Tabard.

Tabard is a funny, tall man so present and so grounded you cannot take your eyes off of him.  Instead of stealing kisses he is stealing scenes.

He looks familiar.

Could he be?

Yes!

He is Michael Lonsdale.

Remember Ronin (1998)?  That delicious Robert De Niro movie directed by John Frankenheimer.  With Jean Reno and Natascha McElhorne.  Stellan Skarsgard and Sean Bean.  And Jonathan Pryce.  With one of the greatest car chases in film history.

Remember the man in that movie who painted miniatures?  And doled out philosophical wisdom?

He was Jean-Pierre.  Played by Michael Lonsdale.  And he stole the scene then.  Thirty years after doing it in our movie here.

Micheal Lonsdale is an actor's actor.  And he works.  You may have seen him.  He has worked on more than 180 films, his most recent one released just a few months ago.  Nearly fifty years after our movie here.  And having started his career twelve years before!

He also played in The Day of the Jackal (1973), the James Bond film Moonraker (1979) (as Hugo Drax), Chariots of Fire (1981), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Remains of the Day (1993), Jefferson in Paris (1995), Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005), and Gods and Men (2010).

While Tabard has Antoine at the shoe store doing research, Tabard's wife takes a liking to Antoine.

Uh-oh!

She is a cougar.  A Mrs. Robinson.

And Delphine Seyrig, who plays Mme. Tabard, also played in The Day of the Jackal.  And starred in our earlier film Last Year at Marienbad (1961) (101, April 11), as the woman, A.

Antoine has been reading Balzac.  Honoré de Balzac.  The Lily of the Valley.  Published in 1835.  A beloved French writer.  A beloved French novel.

About Felix and Henriette.  Who love each other but never consummate their love.

It is part of The Human Comedy.

Mme. Tabard has also read it.

And she tells Antoine they will add a twist to it.  Give it a different ending.  Ooh la la.

Antoine has his hands full.

He is trying to make a living.  Trying to make it in life.

And trying to figure out how to love and whom to love.

His fiancée Christine?  His fake boss's/real client's wife?

I know what you are thinking.  Really?  Some decisions are just not that hard.

But this is Antoine Doinel.

All decisions are hard.

Will he get it wrong or will he get it right?

In a tragedy things end poorly.

In a comedy things end well.

This movie is a comedy.