STOLEN KISSES Movie Review

Baisers Voles

Antoine Doinel, the troubled 13-year-old of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, had already made a second screen appearance when this full-fledged sequel—the third Doinel film—was released. (He appeared as a love-struck teenager in the Antoine and Colette segment of the 1962 omnibus film Love at Twenty.) Stolen Kisses begins with Antoine's discharge from the army under questionable circumstances (mirroring Truffaut's own military experience) and follows his exploits as a rookie private detective. Infatuated as he is with his girlfriend (Claude Jade), Antoine is nevertheless not immune to the charms of an attractive older woman (Delphine Seyrig) who happens to be married to the store owner who's hired Antoine to do some undercover work. A genuinely sweet film that is especially reassuring in light of the many possibilities that awaited Antoine at the end of The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses nevertheless is marked by a melancholy, resigned tone that is underscored by the wistful Charles Trenet tune that closes the film. That vaguely unsettled quality is no accident: 1968 was a tumultuous year in France—as in much of the rest of the world, of course—and the furor over the French Ministry of Culture's short-lived removal of Henri Langlois, the beloved head of the Cinémathèque Française, from his post was a galvanizing event for French filmmakers and critics. This crisis took place during the filming of Stolen Kisses, which is why Truffaut dedicated it to the Cinémathèque, complete with an image of its then-padlocked gates.

NEXT STOP … The 400 Blows, Love at Twenty, Bed and Board, Love on the Run

1968 90m/C FR Jean-Pierre Leaud, Delphine Seyrig, Michel Lonsdale, Claude Jade; D: Francois Truffaut; W: Francois Truffaut, Claude de Givray; C: Denys Clerval; M: Antoine Duhamel. National Society of Film Critics Awards ‘69: Best Director (Truffaut); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘68: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS COL