CALIFORNIA MOVIE JOURNAL (January 2022)

[Chris Knipp]

THE SOFT SKIN/LA PEAU DOUCE (François Truffaut 1964). This qualifies as a Truffaut Nouvelle Vague film. As Malle's The Fire Within is wholly focused on an alcoholic's suicidality and Jacque Demy's Bay of Angels looks only at gambling addiction, The Soft Skin concentrates wholly on adultery. The subject is Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly, an actor Truffaut reportedly disliked) - does his last name intentionally have the French word for "coward" in it? - a well known bourgeois intellectual, a publisher and writer and speaker, who gets involved with Nicole (Catherine Deneuve's older sister Françoise Dorléac, who died three years later in a car accident), an airline stewardess. He's not attractive but Nicole is drawn to his prestige. He must seem much more solid than her pilot boyfriend. Lachenay has a little daughter and an elegant, impressive wife who goes on the rampage when she finds out about this. In black and white, this film is simple and precise and unfolds in neat procedural steps. I admire its precision and its look, the cold way it examines Lachenay's weak face. Truffaut reportedly had had some adulterous episodes he wasn't proud of and that inspired him to make a film that looks coldly at the subject. Criterion Channel Nouvelle Vague series.