Confidentially Y'ours

I don't think I'll ever understand the thrill of hunting.

Whenever I see an animal like a deer or bunny I think I'm incredibly lucky to see it roaming free.

Canada and Québec have a lot of animals though, we're a bit spoiled when it comes to wildlife sightings, and for this reason it still amazes me that in smaller countries with much larger human populations, people still hunt deer and rabbit; this will never even come close to making sense to me!

Julien Vercel pays the price in Confidentially Yours, however, as he foolishly awaits harmless ducks to fly by, when he could have clearly been expressing himself less destructively by engaging in sundry less violent activities.

He's framed for murder.

An associate (who happens to be close friends with his wife) is shot in the face near his location, with the same ammo he habitually uses, ammo which no one else buys.

He discusses his morbid state with his wife after she returns home from an excursion, then takes off for a chat with the law, before returning home to find she's also been killed.

Had he left those poor ducks alone it's emphatically clear his tormenter would have backed down, and let him be to live in peace with his trusted wife and real estate business.

But he had to recklessly seek the freewheeling flesh of independent lifeforms, which leads to heinous punishment and blind monstrous terror as he awkwardly flees.

Fortunately, his co-worker's in love with him and generously agrees to help prove his innocence.

They hide out together and precociously intuit the investigative role of an agile detective.

I suppose Truffaut never moved away from these themes and consistently examined love and fidelity throughout his career, almost as if he's lampooning himself to tease his critics with the structural sensation seductively found in this one.

But I've never known him to take the side of individualistic entities and interlace irate providential misgivings, with the hope of saving France's robust wildlife populations for future generations to freely admire!

Certainly, the French are an admirable people whose commendable work/life balance should be adopted worldwide, along with their sense of humour and delicate timing, but are their wildlife populations not also to be celebrated!?

There must be some incredible ecotourism possibilities awaiting curious peeps when the Olympics finish!

Even Truffaut recognized the tremendous natural beauty.

And aloofly enshrined it in film noir!

Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows)

An unhinged imagination mendaciously prone feverishly flows with mischievous delinquency, in a time less alternatively accommodating when harsh punishments still prevailed.

He can't fluently comprehend discipline as its laid out by his parents and teachers, and begins skipping school after a headstrong dispute with his weary fed-up severe enseigneur.

His step-father habitually complains as his treasured belongings keep disappearing, the boy not comprehensively considering his disastrous petty malcontent abbreviations.

Unfortunately, his independent mother even admits his routine irritates her, and like little Claudius he proceeds unloved although he acts out much more rebelliously.

This lack of love the absent bond awkwardly infuriates further as he misses school, and notices her spending time with someone else, someone clearly not his step-father.

His thefts become more daring and he even enlists the aid of a lonesome friend, before the law is swiftly called in and a new trajectory meticulously hewn.

They didn't have to be quite so draconian if they had only accepted sole responsibility.

And made a serious effort to turn things around.

They're occupationally challenged however (they're more focused on their careers).

They don't really care, it's a bitter denunciation of self-centred parents who don't nurture their children, and the horrid situations which potentially arise if the young one reacts with aggrieved insurrection.

It may have had an impact on social reform within France after it was released, nevertheless, the French actually listening to what their artists have to say, since the poor child's utter abandonment and isolation in the film's final moments evocatively promotes the need for systemic change. 🎻

It's a powerful scene which correspondingly brings to mind A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or any artist in his or her childhood when they let their genius run chaotically amok. 

It's clear little M. Doinel needs compassion not the fastidious lockdown permeating bootcamp, but that's what things were like in the cold-hearted old world which blind foolish unsympathetic jerks look to with manufactured nostalgia.

Many blossoming artists remain ill-accustomed to ubiquitous rules.

Especially when they're young children. 

A bit more progressive in this day and age.

L'amour en fuite (Love on the Run)

The lighter side of romantic inhibition comically elaborates (through flashback) in Truffaut's L'amour en fuite (Love on the Run).

Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) once again finds himself pursuing the irresistible shortly following his divorce after love interest Sabine (Dororthée) punishes him. 

Driven by genuine liberated invention, his expositions know no bounds, and proceed posthaste wholeheartedly, zephyristic zounds. 

I suppose this goes without saying if you're familiar with the narrative thread, which becomes much more endearing with each instalment frisked and fled.

Indomitable infatuation regal flush disposed curiosity, multivariable assumed inconstant freeform precious jocose romance.

In L'amour en fuite so prone to accident he rediscovers love lost forgotten, who's just purchased the sultry novel he's been writing from film to film.

He takes inquisitive note and seeks rapprochement upon a train, where the details of his book encounter critical acclaim.

He generates appeal beholden flourishes notwithstanding, but can't escape the legal shrewd exotic reprimanding.

Even though he's just incapable of remaining honest, loyal, and true, his partners still adore him unabrasive through and through.

Not to the point where they'll let him get away with it but they still can't deny their feelings, and the lack of boredom he freely generates as he ascertains impulsively.

There's no doubt that creative explanations are his supple imaginative forte, nor that if one enjoys a passionate argument he graciously accommodates.

If so much of life's caught up with routine I suppose there's excitement in experimentation, although it's by no means a general rule but how else to explain the reality?

I'm uncertain as to how feminists or Me Too would respond to the charming Antoine, is he to be condemned for his indiscretions or upheld through honest light?

His inexhaustible enthusiasm demonstrates a thorough love of women, and he isn't forceful or mean or brutal, he's rather quite innocent, inquisitive, enamoured. 

Rascally. 

Is such genuine affection preferable at times to duty and is this why feminists don't condemn him (in fiction), or has Truffaut simply gotten away with it scandalous film after scandalous film?

Antoine certainly means well as he honestly follows his instinct, and doesn't lack ideal sincerity in his explorations of l'amour.

Perhaps just a childish fantasy exaggerating infidelity, to lighten the austere mood that proliferates at times?

Either way it's a funny ending to a story that went way too far.

Not as much depth as Domicile conjugal.

But still traditionally entertaining.  

Domicile conjugal (Bed & Board)

A young married couple creatively engages with their community, who's as lively as they are entertaining, fluid interactive inquisitive high spirits.

The film's set in a chill inner-city neighbourhood wherein which personality abounds, and characters work in alternative disciplines, as nothing passes by unnoticed.

Everything's intriguingly unorthodox inasmuch as the characters aren't career oriented, and are still living active productive lives, rich in constantly shifting locomotion.

The story's focused on the young married couple and their struggles to continuously cohabitate, both partners verbosely articulated, capable of aptly uplifting what have you.

It's a remarkable script overflowing with compelling detail and multiple swift nuanced characters, it's so quick and thoughtful it commands your complete attention, critically assailing if you should ever turn away.

The subject matter's refreshing and captures flourishing discourse in motion (book titles, staircases, loans, parking tickets), comments and observations emphatically resound, with random pertinent reflective ebullient life, interlocked through versatile direction.

The plot does steer into sleaze at times and I think the film would have been stronger without the affair, but it seems like Truffaut sought to stultify infidelity, I'm not sure if the results are Me Too.

I wonder what it would have been like if there had been no controversial drama, no traditional plot elements, just communal reverberations?

Can't a multifaceted collection of comical characters and situations just co-exist without something drastic, working and conversing and living without serious game changing invention?

The thoughts and ideas can diversify themselves without having to alter their terrain.

They keep flowing perspicaciously throughout.

But slowly take on a specified logo.

Domicile conjugal (Bed & Board) isn't a grad school seminar, loosely based on a fluctuating theme, but I'd argue it starts out that way, and may have been more impressive if left unrestrained.

Perhaps having multiple conflicting yet complimentary points judiciously interspersed throughout dialogue in flux can make a more meaningful impact, insofar as so much expression cultivates serendipity, which can generate romantic syntax?

If having a predominant point is oft presumed as a crucial essential, when so much life unwinds at random, perhaps manifold eclipsed ideas reflect something more realistic, that boldly suggests je ne sais quoi?

It seems like so much life's a case study where you have to find the principal cause.

This is very important when developing vaccines.

But not as integral to the arts or cinema.

Domicile conjugal's still a masterpiece of urban intensity which brings an irresistible community to life.

Do filmmakers ever go one step further?

Slacker!

Slacker immediately comes to mind!

*Perhaps when developing vaccines you have to search for contemporaneous elements? I don't know much about vaccine development.

Jules et Jim

And two friends, comfortable in each other's presence, accepting and appreciative of their differences, curious and generous, fall in love with the same woman. Their friendship is strong enough to survive petty jealousies but their rational approach must coalesce with a temperamental vengeful beautiful seductive other, someone created for all to desire but none to possess, as they attempt to recalibrate ancient volatile amorous restrictions, and logically come to terms with that which is scientifically forbidden.

Humble temperaments and a disregard for material goods produce a congenial state of affairs within which archaeology plays a constructive role and time is distended within its seemingly constant particularity.

Only the unanticipated extremes of the one, the refusal to tolerate anything but a complete and unadulterated submission, as they seek to sustain a subjective set of checks and balances, upon which they remain on top, threatens to dissolve things.

Sulphuric acid for the eyes of men who lie. Lips set in stone. Paris and trips to the countryside.

What is left unwritten.

The introduction of permanence disrupts Jules et Jim's carefree aesthetic through the blinding championing of victory.

Solutions chaotically present themselves.

Effects need not be taken into account.

Shoot the Piano Player

Sacrifices which destroy the prosperity they engender. Dreams for the future challenged by the threats of the past. Petty jealousies destabilizing the security of the present. A struggling artist trying his best to avoid loving and being loved. François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player presents Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) as he makes his living playing the piano in a Parisian bar. Waitress Léna (Marie Dubois) has fallen in love with him and seeks to resurrect his dematerialized fame. Initially content to continue practising his honky-tonk, the power of love reinvigorates his pursuit of something classical. But brothers and gangsters and reflections and passions stand in his way as he psychologically rediscovers the life he once flourishingly possessed.

Shoot the Piano Player's cultivated underground jovially analyzes universal materialistic themes such as marriage and commodity acquisition, deviously situating Truffaut's observations in scenes traditionally used to establish a predetermined variety of character and mood. The resultant character and mood he establishes is therefore composed of startling insights extracted from various experiential outcomes whose histories convivially salute the unexpected. The scene where the thugs discuss their material goods with Fido (Richard Kanayan) after kidnapping him is first rate. Minor characters are given room to breathe, Raoul Coutard's cinematography illustrates the compact social nature of a bustling metropolis, and dreams synthesize with desires to produce a productive yet troubled practical theoretical posture. Its mainstream narrative is full of stipulated thoughts concerning art, careers, and gender relations, stipulated thoughts whose content is romanticized by their underground foil.

Charlie just wants to play the piano. Other people problematize his plans. Léna reminds him of the concerts he could still be performing. His community reminds him that other people still desire Léna.

La femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door)

You've recuperated. You're over her. What happened 8 years ago has been forgotten and you've moved, found a wife, had a child, and started working full time. Things are great, your life is stable, and you enjoy the peaceful tranquility that permeates every aspect of your small town existence. Then things take a turn for the worst. The woman whom you passionately loved even though she drove you nuts moves in next door with her new husband and is on her way over to dinner. You try and avoid her but she wants to chat. You try and suppress your emotions but they're simply to strong. The affair begins and both of you try to end it, try and take the mature route, accept the logistics of present circumstances, and live as if it never happened. But it did happen, and your desire is exploding, and there's no solution but to embrace it, nurture it, cultivate it, as it effectively destroys you. François Truffaut's La femme d'à côté (The Woman Next Door) examines this scenario and the tempestuous repercussions it engenders. A sober reflection concerning inflammatory subjects, it crafts an hysterically lucid perspective which thoroughly analyzes the conception of love.

Truffaut and Hamed

Truffaut's Day for Night has an uncanny knack for delivering witty, insightful, piquant one-liners. Several scenes end with these well-positioned phrases and they make the myriad transitions all the more compelling. Marwan Hamed's The Yacoubian Buildingparallels Day for Night in form insofar as both film's boast huge casts, quick, active editing, and layered, intricate story-lines which sprightly demand the viewer's attention. In The Yacoubian Building, the scenes are often brief yet comprehensive, covering a lot of narrative ground without using much dialogue or imagery. Consequently, the quality of the dialogue suffers beneath the weight of the amount of information expressed. Hence, a lot of ground is covered throughout Yacoubian's story, but the terse time limits allotted for each scene offer shortened, occasionally juvenile observations regarding complicated plot lines. If Hamed were able to maintain the tight grip he has on his melodrama while incorporating the insightful dialogue so aptly utilized in Truffaut's Day for Night, using it to motivate the plot rather than simply expressing observations, he would be an even more exceptionally gifted filmmaker, distinguishing his work while maintaining its pronounced mass appeal.