The Soft Skin

The Soft Skin
by Francois Truffaut

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Daniel Ceccaldi, Francoise Dorleac, Jean Desailly, Laurence Badie, Nelly Benedetti
Director: Francois Truffaut
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.66:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-10-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber

Movie Reviews of The Soft Skin

Movie Review: Paris is not for us!
Summary: 5 Stars

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!

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Summary of The Soft Skin

Fran?ois 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 (Fran?oise 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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