Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

lasttimeisaw François Truffaut continues the story of Antoine Doinel, the alter ego of Jean-Pierre Léaud, 9 years after the groundbreaking THE 400 BLOWS (1959), the rebellious boy has reached the adolescence, still rebellious though, he is discharged from his military service for being unruly, the comic vibe is established from the very start by the juxtaposition of the dead-serious officer and a laughter-repressed Antoine, who turns out to be a street-smart young man in spite of a tough childhood, and his parents have been completely evacuated out of his life (without any explanation). The first place he visits is a whorehouse, then stops by his girlfriend Christine Darbon (Jade), but is told she is out on a ski vacation by her genial parents (Ceccaldi and Duhamel), but Truffaut slyly implies that there seems to be something else on Christine's agenda now.Antoine finds a job as a night porter in a hotel in Paris, thanks to Christine's father's recommendation, a comely Christine visits him one night, she greets him on the new job and seems casually happy but not so enthusiastic. Soon he is fired for being an unwitting helper of a private detective Henri (Harry-Max), who instead introduces him to the new exciting line of business managed by Monsieur Blady (Falcon). Antoine starts his new vocation with great passion although his stalking skill is a far cry from professional. Truffaut's perspicacious insight of urban savvy is brought to the fore in this segment, mainly surrounding two cases, a subtle love triangle about a (closeted) man looking for his magician lover and a more detailed inside-job, where Antoine is assigned to undercover in a shoe shop owned by Georges Tabard (Lonsdale, a great scene-stealer), who wants the agency to find out why he is so disliked by everyone around him, but the irony is that during Georges' loquacious introduction of his background, the reason behind that is pretty crystal-clear. During the course, Antoine is hopelessly having a crush with Georges' wife Fabienne (Seyrig, enigmatic and fabulously seductive), the apotheosis of a woman's sheer perfection. He is torn between his unquenchable fascination to Fabienne and the on-and-off relationship with Christine, which extracts the most vehement outburst in the mirror scenes where Antoine's unfitting characteristic is pungently reflected, with the iterations of self-persuasion and self-boost, to no avail. Eventually after tasting the temptation, which costs him the second job, he reconciles with Christine in the cutesy chapter where he works as a TV repairman, but the uncertainty of his own feelings becomes more pronounced in the coda, where a stalker makes a wanton confession to Christine in the presence of Antoine, both dismiss at him on the spot, but think twice, it is the capriciousness of love and emotions that will certainly puzzle Antoine, and trigger every viewer, to discover what will happen to him and Christine later, aka. in BED & BOARD (1970), approximately after a two-years spell.STOLEN KISSES is charming in its carefree tempo and disarming in its frankness about whimsical triviality, it is not a major or challenging piece of work from Truffaut, but still scintillates with the profundity of a intelligent life-observer, an obliging humorist and an inspiring filmmaker.

Prismark10 By the end of The 400 Blows we see young Jean-Pierre Leaud looking out to the sea to an uncertain future after he escaped from juvenile detention.In Stolen Kisses, we catch up with him as a young adult trying to find a place in life but hopelessly all at sea.Antoine Doinel plays Jean-Pierre Leaud as geeky, gawky, awkward, and rebellious.He has been dishonourably discharged from the army. He gets a telling off from his superior office about the youth of today. Antoine pulls funny faces at this point to highlight his nonchalant attitude. Antoine then proceeds to steal his uniform, go back to Paris and have sex with a prostitute.Antoine then goes to see his on/off girlfriend who he has not written to to for some time when he was at the army. We suspect that she is seeing someone else and we later note that she is also being followed.Antoine who is uneducated, lacking a lot of skills even common sense haphazardly goes through a series of jobs. He becomes a night- watchman at a hotel which lasts one night because he was blagged by a private detective. Luckily the detective gets him a job at his detective agency. Although he learns some skills he is still inept but he is planted at Tobard's shoe shop as the boss wants to know what his staff think about him. Like the film The Graduate, the boss's older wife has designs for him.All the time he has this on/off relationship with bourgeois beautiful girlfriend Christine which blows hot and cold. She seems aloof and distant one minute and desires him the next. He also has trouble relating to her, I never understood why he never wrote to her for months when he was in the army. At one point Antoine takes her out to a stakeout when following a magician and leaves her behind at a club.For someone who was a detective Antoine does not realise that Christine is being stalked by someone else.The film is a screwball comedy about love and obsession and two young people getting together awkwardly at a time when the young people of France felt displaced.Again François Truffaut is well served by his alter-ego Antoine Doinel who has the boyish, charming and goofy quality that brings out the humour. His persona is different from The 400 Blows where we felt that he might end up being a petty criminal lost in some underclass.

T Y Perhaps I wasn't meant to view this two days after falling in love with The 400 Blows; as nine years actually expire between the two films. I'm half an hour into it (after also viewing Antoine et Colette) and I'm not pleased. I had no urge to see Antoine grow into a spindly, nervous, timid, tentative, inept bourgeoisie. His job arc and whimsy are certainly not what I craved more detail about after the first movie. I didn't need to see him adrift in his 20s with no charisma, and making friends with the parents of girls who won't date him. (!?) Here he's become super feminized. I can't stand his stupid haircut, and the swagger that he had an adolescent is gone.This is not the adult that was implied/promised by the adolescent. I really would have liked to see Doinel's story arc resume more immediately after the age he was in the 400 Blows. The phase that transitions Doinel to the period shown here is what I would have found interesting.I could barely get through this. I doubt I'll watch the rest of the series now. I cannot imagine, given Truffaut's own comments about film, where he imagined the merit of this was. I see no difference in this and other shallow sequels that try to cash in. I also see no art in this. How could he take his own work and make it so trite? Truffaut used to talk about keeping faith with the viewer. What did that mean to him if could make this? I would have preferred if he had just killed Doinel off to save the character and audiences from this. He was extraordinary. Now he's shockingly average and unbelievably annoying. He was heroic. Now he's nothing. I liked the kid. I hate this character. What I've read about Truffaut's own life has moved me more than this. Nothing is as aggravating to me as squandered talent. This is the worst sequel I have ever seen. It's also an ugly, ugly looking film.

sbruno SPOILERS INCLUDED: The morning-after breakfast scene is so endearingly simple as Truffaut manages to convey all of Antoine & Christine's affection sans pushy music, cliché, or even dialogue- just the two of them sitting at a table, scribbling their declarations of romance to one another on a piece of napkin over breakfast. We don't even need to know what they're writing down. We, the audience are already captivated and satisfied to just share in their intimate moment celebrating life's little joys. And as we watch the scene with the flighty Antoine staring at his own image in the mirror, repeating the names of his objects of desires with utterly convicted indecision, the question of who should he pursue becomes a matter of life and death. Fabienne Tabard. Christine Darbon. We wait in suspense. And when he begins to repeat his own name with the same earnestness, we realize that perhaps this love is not fleeting- could how he chooses love determine the very essence who he is? Truffaut made a slight, refreshing break from the melancholy of the first two Antoine Doinel series. This third installment has some of the most charming cinematic exclamations of love and that twenty-something search for the "joie de vivre."