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.
