The Soft Skin (1964)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Soft Skin (1964) – F. Truffaut

Falling just after Truffaut’s masterpieces (The 400 Blows, 1959; Jules and Jim, 1962), The Soft Skin also shows the creative techniques that were the hallmark of the Nouvelle Vague.  Jean Desailly plays an author/publisher who has an affair with Françoise Dorléac, a stewardess (to use the 1960s term); the film documents, from his perspective, how he navigates the necessary secrecy and juggles the various people who can’t find out (including his wife and small daughter).  I read somewhere that the plot echoes circumstances from Truffaut’s own life (he was divorced in 1965) and the film seems sympathetic toward Desailly’s character – or at least tries to convey his emotional experiences.  Truffaut uses editing and sound magnificently to capture the excitement of the elicit rendezvous and the anxiety related to the risks and inevitable discovery.  You can see his debt and homage to Hitchcock in the best sequences here (and indeed his interviews with Hitch that formed the basis of the famous book had occurred two years earlier).  However, it is impossible to shake the sordid inappropriateness of the actions here, by both Desailly and Dorléac – our identification with them is undermined by our rejection of their actions.  One wonders how much Truffaut himself is complicit in supporting the moral transgressions on display – until the shock ending, which seems to negate everything that has gone before (or provide an easy out for that seeming complicity).  Apparently, this film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival but the craft on display makes it worthwhile even if the content matter is unpalatable.