Confidentially Yours
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Movie Reviews of Confidentially Yours
Movie Review: Finally, Truffaut
Summary: 5 Stars
Back in 1983 I saw a screening at a festival that was supposed to be introduced by Francois Truffaut. On the day an apologetic Fanny Ardant turned up instead, apologizing that the director was feeling a little ill and was not up to travelling: in fact, he had just been diagnosed with the brain tumour that would kill him a few months later, and Vivemant Dimanche! aka Finally, Sunday/Confidentially Yours would turn out to be his last film. It works better on the big screen than the small, but it's still an immensely likeable little number that brings Francois Truffaut's career almost full circle to the kind of black and white semi-noir he championed as a critic. It's one of Truffaut's most purely cinematic films - while much of it is dialogue driven, there are few of the awkward literary conceits that he would resort to in some of his "tell, don't show" movies like Two English Girls, instead letting the character interaction and the loving black and white visuals speak for themselves. Most of all, it has a real sense of fun that even a brief melancholy reflection on the difference between death - something definite - and murder - something almost abstract - can detract from, whether it's Fanny Ardant's knocking out a suspect with a miniature Eiffel Tower, treating the fugitive Jean-Louis Tritignant to a view of her legs as she passes the window to the office he is hiding in or carrying out an investigation in wildly inappropriate attire, and there's a great joke about Paths of Glory. It goes a little over the top at the end, but by then you'll have had so much fun you'll gladly forgive it almost anything. And the last shot is a delightfully sweet and playful epitaph to a life in movies as a group of children kick a camera lens around a church during a wedding to the accompaniment of Georges Delerue's charmingly catchy music.
Although the Region 1 DVD boasts a decent transfer and the theatrical trailer, those with multi-region players might want to seek out Cinema Club's UK DVD, a better transfer with the trailer, an informative introduction by Serge Toubiana and a likeable, affectionate and informative audio commentary by Jean-Louis Tritignant recorded for the French DVD in 2001.
Movie Review: Love conquers all
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a movie about love as only the French can tell it, about the lengths a woman will go when she is in love, even as the man (who seems unaware of her feelings for him) fires her, slaps her across the face, and insults her. Love is the motivation for everything she does. When her boss (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover Barbara (Fanny Ardant) poses as a prostitute in order to uncover the truth. This movie was shot in black and white, and it seems to have a 1950s atmosphere to it. That being said, the decision to shoot this film in black and white instead of in color seems appropriate. Not being very knowledgeable with Alfred Hitchcock's movies, I consider this as being all Truffaut. Some scenes were apparently inspired by Hitchcock but it is Truffaut who is telling the story. And it is his off-screen love (Fanny Ardant) who shines in the role of Barbara. This was Truffaut's swan song, and that song is about love conquering all, as the ending suggests. If you are a fan of either Truffaut or Fanny Ardant, or you just like a good love story, then this movie is for you.Movie Review: The end of the line, and a great "entertainment"
Summary: 5 Stars
It's fitting that Francois Truffaut's final movie before his death should pay direct homage to the one director he admired above all others: Alfred Hitchcock. This is a murder mystery in the tradition of the master, right down to the little comic touches; even the love story is straight Hitchcock.
The story is too complicated to actually summarize, but it begins with a man being shot while hunting, an innocent man being accused, and his secretary helping him prove his innocence and falling in love with him at the same time. (Based on just that about a half-dozen Hitchcock films should come to mind.) Two more dead bodies show up, the chase leads to Nice and other places, and leads crop up and disappear before the real murderer is apprehended. At times the story line gets too complicated to follow, and coincidences occur left and right, but Truffaut by this point in his career was only interested in making good entertainments - and in that he succeeded admirably. Filmed in b&w. Great fun to watch.
Movie Review: Confidentially Yours
Summary: 5 Stars
Part screwball love story, part Hitchcockian detective thriller, "Yours" finds the leggy, buoyant Ardant, Truffaut's real-life muse and partner, playing sleuth on behalf of the man she secretly loves, and landing in a seedy, menacing world of organized crime and prostitution. Photographed in gorgeous, faux-`40s black-and-white, "Confidentially Yours" is an elegant, well-crafted noir brimming with Truffaut's signature sprightliness and romantic joie de vivre. Sadly, this was the great French director's final love letter to the cinema.Movie Review: HITCHCOCKIAN LOVE AND MURDER
Summary: 4 Stars
The late Francois Truffaut was one of the inventors and purveyors of French New Wave cinema. He was also an ardent admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. In "CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS," Truffaut's last film, he deftly pays homage to Sir Alfred and displays the signature cinematic style he so loved in a noirish tale of love and murder. The witty screenplay, adapted by Truffaut and Suzanne Schiffman, is based on American Charles William's novel, "The Long Saturday Night" but relocated to a small town in the South of France.
The premise is simple. Vercel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a luckless businessman who is under suspicion for murdering his wife and her lover. His smart and beautiful secretary Barbara (Fanny Ardent), who is hopelessly in love with her boss, tries to solve the murder and prove his innocence while Varcel hides in his office and then is on the lam.
The beauty of this elegant and intelligent film is in the role reversals that make the familiar territory a brand new landscape. The sentimentality that permeates almost every scene is never allowed to soften the unexpected, and sometimes cutting, dark humor.
Enough can't be said about Ardent's charismatic charm. The camera loves her, and so did Truffaut -- she was his real life paramour during the making of this film. In many scenes, she literally seems to glow. For many videophiles, she is the primary reason to watch this delightful gem. It is certainly among Truffaut's very best films.
The crisp, striking black and white cinematography is by Néstor Almendros ("Two English Girls").
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