La Peau Douce [Silken Skin] **** (1964, Jean Dessailly, Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti) – Classic Movie Review 3010

For his dazzling fourth feature, co-writer and director François Truffaut returns in 1964 to the love triangle theme of his previous movie, Jules et Jim, but this time with a weak man (Jean Dessailly) at the centre and two women (Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti) who never meet.

With the help of a incisive script (co-written by Jean-Louis Richard) and penetrating performances, Truffaut makes something fresh and original out of the commonplace topic of adultery and puts a bright new gloss on the old tale of a middle-aged man leaving his wife for a pretty young woman.

Desailly plays the married French publisher and lecturer Pierre Lachenay, who visits Portugal where he meets air hostess Nicole (Dorléac). Back in France they become lovers, understandably enraging his wife Franca (Benedetti), but he just can’t stay away from Nicole.

Truffaut wanted to follow his period love triangle of Jules et Jim with a Sixties modern-day version. But this time he seems to be deliberately creating chilly characters and distancing himself from them, and he doesn’t allow us to get swept up in the emotion of the love triangle.

With a score by Georges Delerue and black and white images by Raoul Coutard, this is a penetrating film with a silken skin and an icy heart.

Classic Movie Review 3010