The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema, March 29-April 4
Stolen Kisses (1968)
Directed by François Truffaut
After his youthful indiscretions in The 400 Blows and his bitter first taste of unrequited love at age 20 in Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses presents Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) in a state of transition: still as restless as ever, but perhaps finally thinking of settling down. But then, surely that’s everyone’s 20s, to varying degrees—a universally messy state of adulthood that Truffaut reflects through his episodic narrative, with Antoine, through a series of extremely odd jobs (hotel night clerk, private detective), trying new things out, failing, and learning from those experiences (or does he?). The potential for settling down comes in the form of the patient, homely love interest Christine Darbon (Claude Jade)—though Antoine, an inner romantic seen reading Balzac’s The Lily of the Valley at the beginning, can’t help but be temporarily swayed by the charms of the more glamorous upper-crust Fabienne Tabard (Delphine Seyrig), who’s clearly trapped in a loveless marriage with cold, imperious shoe-salesman husband Georges (Michael Lonsdale). Eventually, though, Antoine chooses Christine—t,hough not before Truffaut ends his film on an ambiguous note, with a stalker approaching Christine in Antoine’s presence and declaring his “definitive” love for her, thus suggesting the tenuousness of Antoine’s faithfulness that will come to fruition in Bed and Board and Love on the Run. Such a moment reminds us that, even in charming-humanist mode, this great French auteur couldn’t help but disturb. Kenji Fujishima (April 2, 4pm; April 5, 1:30pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Léaud retrospective, preceded by the 1962 short Antoine and Colette)