Stolen Kisses (1968)

Stolen Kisses (Baisers voles)
Directed by Francois Truffaut
Written by Francois Truffaut, Claude de Givray, and Bernard Revon
1968/France
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel

 

[box] Georges Tabard: Records are a joke. There’s only one way to learn: in bed with an English girl. It’s time you learned. I learned with an Australian girl while her husband was at work painting houses.

Fabienne Tabard: Like Hitler.

Georges Tabard: Don’t ever say Hitler was a housepainter. That’s slander. Hitler painted landscapes.[/box]

The third in Truffaut’s “Antoine Doinel” films is a charming, hilarious romp through a clueless young man’s romantic woes.

As the film begins we see Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) being dishonorably discharge from the army, just one of the many screw-ups in his life since we met him in The 400 Blows.  He  returns to his on-again-off-again girlfriend Christine (Claude Jade) and continues his very nervous and hesitant semi-courtship of her.  He gets a job as a hotel night clerk and is fired after he lets private detectives into the room of a fornicating couple. That leads to the job he is on for most of the film – as the world’s clumsient private eye.

He is assigned to to spy on the employees of a shoe store and falls in love/lust with the owner’s wife (Delphine Seyrig).  Needless to say, he has another job by the end.

This movie was even funnier the second-time around.  Antoine is such a lovable loser. Truffaut was very lucky to discover Jean-Pierre Leaud.  It’s impossible to imagine anyone else as the director’s alter-ego.  Warmly recommended.

Stolen Kisses was nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar.

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