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The Soft Skin |
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Staring:
Jean Desailly, Francoise Dorleac, Nelly Benedetti, Daniel Ceccaldi, Laurence Badie
Director:
Francois Truffaut
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $26.74
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Amazon.com
François Truffaut's cool, creamy-smooth melodrama of a doomed affair sets the lush romanticism of exciting indiscretion in a world where sudden stabs of ominous music hint at a tragedy in the making. Jean Desailly is a famous literary critic and publisher who becomes entranced with the lithe, strikingly beautiful flight attendant (Françoise Dorleac) who keeps crisscrossing his path while he's away on a speaking engagement. He's middle-aged, successful, and seemingly happily married with a wife and daughter, but he plunges ahead with an affair, careful to avoid friends and familiar places. The Soft Skin is not really a thriller, but Truffaut invests it with Hitchcockian echoes of guilt and fear of discovery, and he meticulously plots scenes with the precision of a heist film. Pulling back the veneer of chic elegance and attractive confidence, Desailly emerges not so much sordid as vain and pathetic, and his wife (Nelly Benedetti) comes into her own with her heartbreaking discovery of his lies. At once angry, hurt, and threatened, she grasps at reconciliation while sabotaging her own efforts with frustrated attacks. It's an unusual film with sudden changes in tone that do little to prepare the viewer for the dark climax: the tragic side of Truffaut's fascination with philandering men that runs throughout his career. Fans will recognize the scene with the kitten who licks off the plate set out for room service--he re-created it in Day for Night. --Sean Axmaker
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 Truffaut's soft touch, 2006-03-06
La Peau Douce/The Soft Skin is a very pleasant surprise indeed. There's a tendency in much of Truffauts' later work to be over-literate, often throwing in narration that plays more like a prose recital than thought or dialog to convey what he should be doing without it, but there's none of that here. Instead, its illicit romance is told in purely cinematic terms and telling details and, despite the potentially hackneyed material, plays beautifully, whether its the title sequence of two hands caressing in the darkness, a mix-up with room keys as a prelude to seduction or the kitten and the breakfast tray that would make such a memorable comeback in Day for Night.
There's humor and humanity there too, and the hero's painful fallibility on his disastrous dirty weekend in Reihms is one of the great don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-to-cry moments. The ending seems a bit contrived and unlikely despite being based on an actual incident, but he somehow manages to pull that off too.
Sadly, while the UK DVD includes an excellent commentary from co-writer Jean-Louis Richard and archive interviews with Truffaut and Francois Dorleac, this R1 disc comes only with trailers for various truffaut titles.
Keeps you simultaneously glued to the narrative and fearful of the outcome., 2005-10-14
Both intriguing and frustrating - the latter because you want to reach into the screen and slap the protagonist on the side of the head. The plot seems to go mostly nowhere, yet is thoroughly engrossing. Character development is not thorough, but situational development is both thorough and meticulous. A great psychological exposition. Unfortunately, almost no extras.
Paris is not for us!, 2007-09-14
A successful businessman and affective husband meets an alluring airline stewardess in a flight to Lisboan. And as product of a kind invitation to dinner will emerge a torrid romance that will become an unstoppable passion, with the expected tragic consequences.
Truffaut uplifts this simple and so many times told before story to unexpected levels. The employment of the camera as a scrutinizing eye, makes we become true peeping Tom; the poetic of the images, the sublime visual eroticism in sequences of enraptured charm, the accurate use of the melancholic music, suggests and warns step by step by Hitchcokian paths, where the disturbed soul of this man never equals to the steeled determination of his lover. For her, that affair means much more than a random encounter; while his wife begins to suspect something's wrong among them.
Truffaut avoids to fall in the circumstantial anecdote, spicing of audacious narrative innovations, where the social conventions really have enmeshed this man and led him into a deep end, due his lack of self conviction and vital determination to admit the consequences once he crossed the line.
One of the main factors that nourish the narrative vigor of the film, resides in the theatrical influence (Jean Anouilh and William Shakespeare) smartly bounded with suspenseful moments that conform an outstanding and original proposal.
In fact, forty three years have elapsed since this movie was released and (with some little details here and there) the narration has not aged a bit.
And although I am not a twenty four hours hard fan of Truffaut, I have to acknowledge we are in presence of one of his best artistic achievements of his prestigious career.
Inquire and then convince by yourself. "La peau doce" is a sumptuous masterpiece!
At least she shoots him and not herself., 2006-12-20
Watched Truffaut's "Soft Skin" last night. Left a chalky aftertaste in my mouth although I think it might be one of Trouffaut's best films. Let me summarize the plot:
Successful, married, middle-age academic sleeps with stewardess he meets en route to a symposium in Lisbon. Continues to sleep with her when he returns to Paris as, like most men, he doesn't want o eat turkey sandwich every night of his life. Is it love? He thinks so. My observation: midlife crisis, bored with success and complacency of domestic life. Wife confronts him, he lies and blames her on making a scene, she apologizes, he moves out. Continues to tell her that there is not another woman. Girlfriend dumps him (she is smart enough to figure out he still loves his wife and will bore with her.) His wife finds the photos of him and the girlfriend on vacation. She hasn't had one, a vacation that is, in five years. She shoots him. (At least she shoots him and not herself.) [...]
Truffaut's soft touch, 2009-07-26
La Peau Douce/The Soft Skin is a very pleasant surprise indeed. There's a tendency in much of Truffauts' later work to be over-literate, often throwing in narration that plays more like a prose recital than thought or dialog to convey what he should be doing without it, but there's none of that here. Instead, its illicit romance is told in purely cinematic terms and telling details and, despite the potentially hackneyed material, plays beautifully, whether its the title sequence of two hands caressing in the darkness, a mix-up with room keys as a prelude to seduction or the kitten and the breakfast tray that would make such a memorable comeback in Day for Night.
There's humor and humanity there too, and the hero's painful fallibility on his disastrous dirty weekend in Reihms is one of the great don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-to-cry moments. The ending seems a bit contrived and unlikely despite being based on an actual incident, but he somehow manages to pull that off too.
Extras on the Australian Region 4 PAL DVD include archive interviews with Truffaut and Francois Dorleac and with trailers for various Truffaut titles.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781572526037
Format: Black & White, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 1572526033
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Release Date: 1999-10-12
Running Time: 113
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: 1964 |
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