Stolen KissesRating:
Release Date: 23 April, 2002 Retail Price: $19.98 OUR Price: $16.18 You SAVE: $3.80! Cast: Complete Cast (5 total) |
Stolen Kisses Reviews
ANTOINE STRIKES BACK
Antoine Doinel, French director François Truffaut's cinematographic double, returns in STOLEN KISSES after an eight years break (if one excepts the short movie ANTOINE ET COLETTE ). Back to a beloved character for Truffaut, back to the civilian life for Antoine - Jean-Pierre Léaud - Doinel who tries to survive in the Paris of 1967.
STOLEN KISSES is not a realistic movie, it's rather a mixture of light comedy and psychologic melodrama. I could say that Antoine Doinel is the big brother of the characters described 30 years later by Wes Anderson in BOTTLE ROCKET or RUSHMORE.
STOLEN KISSES is also a movie about how Truffaut saw the relations between men and women. According to this movie, they are more than complex and this theme, from this moment on, will be one of the constants of François Truffaut's next movies of the 70's and the 80's.
A dozen Truffaut trailers as bonus features, filmographies and english subtitles. Average sound but below-average images with faded colours.
A DVD for the Doinel fans.
Charming romantic comedy that really is funny
This is a delightful Truffaut movie starring Jean-Pierre Leaud who played Antoine Doinel, the running boy in Truffaut's famous Les Quatre cents coup (1959). He's a young man now just discharged from the army bouncing from one temporary job to another, from being a night watchman to being a TV repairman. He gets into scrapes and gets fired, but presses on (in-between impulsive liaisons with ladies of the evening).
He gets his big chance when he lucks into a job with a private detective agency. After some mishaps he is called upon to take a job (within a job, as it were) at a shoe store to find out why the owner is not liked. There he meets the owner's wife, Fabienne Tabard, played by Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad 1961; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 1972, etc.). He is immediately smitten by her. In typical French cinematic fashion it is not clear whether she is a goddess or a maternal figure for the thoroughly bewitched Antoine.
Meanwhile there is Christine Darbon (Claude Jade) who plays Antoine's real love interest. What makes this film so thoroughly agreeable is Truffaut's light-hearted wit and his studious avoidance of cliche in a genre (the romantic comedy) in which cliches abound. The humor is often tongue-in-cheek, and as subtle as a diplomat's compliment. Leaud's charm and his oh so earnest style make him the perfect foil for life's little jokes. Along the way detective agencies are satirized as are its clientele, including a guy who wants his magician boyfriend tailed only to find that he is--horrors!--married, or the aforementioned shoe haberdasher who hires a private eye (not a shrink!) to find out why he is not beloved.
Bottom line: see this for Francois Truffaut, whose keen sense of humanity's foibles and unique style, sometimes playful and sometimes penetrating, have made him one of cinema's greatest directors.
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