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Soft Skin

Screening: Monday 7 May, 6:30pm

Soft Skin (François Truffaut, France/Portugal 1964) [La peau douce]

A superb tragi-comedy of adultery in which a middle-aged intellectual ducking out from under a demanding wife tries to turn a casual affair with an air hostess into the love of his life, but succeeds only in triggering a calamitous crime passionel. Wry, disenchanted, directed with an astonishingly acute eye for the disruptions of modern urban living (the film is punctuated by gears changing in cars, lights being switched on and off), it is rather as though the airily fantastic triangle of Jules and Jim had been subjected to a cold douche of reality.

Between the two films, Truffaut had been preparing his book on Hitchcock, and the lesson of the master (is) evident in the rigour of Truffaut's direction. (Tom Milne)

Written by Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard. Photographed by Raoul Coutard. With Jean Desailly, Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti, Daniel Ceccaldi.

(DVD, B&W, 113 mins, In French with English subtitles, PG)

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