THE SOFT SKIN Movie Review

Le Peau Douce
Silken Skin

Truffaut's first feature following the worldwide triumph of his Jules and Jim was a decided flop in the United States. It may have been that, following Jules and Jim’s perceived assault on bourgeois values (represented by that film's central ménage-à-trois), this seemingly conventional tale of a married man's affair with an airline stewardess came across as routine. Whatever the reason, it's unfair. The Soft Skin remains the most shamefully and unjustly neglected of Truffaut's early features—it's a darkly funny, powerfully unnerving story of how repressed passion can suddenly surface in exactly the wrong time and place, with disastrous results. Though it begins as a seductive, erotic male fantasy, The Soft Skin gradually and inexorably evolves into the ultimate nightmare of anyone who's ever had or contemplated an affair—it's a logical response to anyone who's ever acted on impulse while rhetorically asking: “What's the worst that can happen?” Jean Desailly is the clueless, middle-aged husband whose rediscovered passion sets the plot in motion; and Nelly Benedetti is his less-than-sympathetic wife. The late Françoise Dorleac plays the object of Desailly's obsession; the combination of her casual compliance and her chilly, unattainable beauty prove irresistibly erotic to the bourgeois, intellectual husband. (The immensely talented Dorleac, who died in an accident four years later, was the sister of Catherine Deneuve. Without meaning to slight one of the most beautiful women alive, one can get an idea of Dorleac's beauty by the fact that some who knew both sisters referred to Françoise as “the pretty one.”)

NEXT STOP … The Blue Angel, Mississippi Mermaid, Fatal Attraction, Damage

1964 120m/B FR Jean Desailly, Nelly Benedetti, Francoise Dorleac, Daniel Ceccaidi; D: Francois Truffaut; W: Francois Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard; C: Raoul Coutard; M: Georges Delerue. VHS, LV HMV, FOX