Confidentially Yours

It's an exercise of style, and not in the best way. I quite liked how it starts, the magic of black and white, the feeling of an old noir film. But the plot is a giant hole, neither thrilling nor funny while it tries to be both, and the chemistry between the lead characters is just not there. Soon all the magic fades and you realize that you don't really care for the fate of those on screen, who did it, who loves whom, whatever. In a few scenes I appreciated the touch of the old master, Truffaut, but in the whole the movie felt artificial and uninteresting.

As a brunette secretary, you're missing a ticked box, and now your job is drifting headlong into rocks, is your boss so homicidal, to kill his wife and her love idol, it's as perplexing as it is, a real flummox. You investigate and research what went down, it leads, to seedy places, around town, iniquities of noir, becomes increasingly bizarre, it's enough to make you scowl, glower and frown. It's not too long before your boss is apprehended, the police, are pretty sure, that he offended, can you get him off the hook, this older man you want to hug, as you desire to make him your future intended.

It's a more than satisfactory reproduction of an early 60s noir whodunit, but the shining light of Fanny Ardant consumes the darkness and casts a spell.

A little similar to The Last Metro (1980), but in the tone of Shoot the Piano Player (1960), and this time François Truffaut found the correct tone and the appropriate genre to tell this great story.

The ending is slightly underwhelming, but it is about my only complaint, Vivement dimanche! is a well-crafted and well-acted movie, there is nothing else to say about it.

You should see it if you have the opportunity, independently, it is an important movie. But it is also the last film of Truffaut, and it is a reason more to see it right now!

It is very difficult for us, those who admired and loved François Truffaut to judge the 1983 'Vivement Dimanche!' (the English title is 'Confidentially Yours' without taking into account the ruthless label that fate has attached to it: his last film! It's not Truffaut's best film or even his most original film. One of his first and best films, 'Shoot the Piano Player', had explored the film noir genre more than two decades before and used the same style of black and white cinematography with a predilection for night scenes. Truffaut's friendship and admiration for Alfred Hitchcock and his fascination with his art are well known. 'Vivement Dimanche!' it is also considered a tribute to him, but it is more than that. The director seems not only to quote from his master, but to borrow, analyse, dismantle and reconstruct some of his methods. I don't know if when he was filming 'Vivement Dimanche!' Truffaut knew about his illness or realised its severity, but it does not look at all like a testament film, on the contrary, it is a film that experiments with means of cinematic expression, taking over and respectfully continuing a tradition with which the director was very familiar. Perhaps because of this film, Truffaut's career gives the feeling that 'the film was interrupted in the middle of the screening' and that there was still so much to say.

'Vivement Dimanche!' it is one of those films from which viewers have a chance to remember isolated fragments and frames rather than the ensemble at some time after watching. No wonder, because thestory is extremely conventional, and has a lot of unlikely aspects. This is apparently a police intrigue, a mystery surrounding who is the perpetrator of a series of crimes, what Americans call a 'whodunit', but the director's attention is focused more on the relationship between the main suspect, a real estate agent played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and his secretary played by Fanny Ardant who undertakes the investigation that could prove his innocence while he is hiding. It is clear, however, that the director was more interested in the stylistic aspects and especially the reuse of some noir films from the 40s and 50s - the black and white cinematography, the phones, the raincoats, the close-ups with background contrasts. However, these are combined with some of Truffaut's recurring passions and themes - the cinema theatre that plays a significant role in the film (including the poster and the mentioning in a dialogue of a Stanley Kubrick film, which in perspective acquires the significance of passing of the torch), the theatre and especially the fascination for women that he shared with Hitchcock. The penultimate scene is exceptional and the master would have included it in his films, including the text, which is a kind of farewell, even if it is uttered by a murderer. "Everything I did was out of love for women." Adieu, François Truffaut.

The most suitable movie in the 80's to be filmed in black-and-white. Masterfully directed by Francois Truffuat. Huge part smart, swift, suspenseful and surprising; interesting almost to the very end, (the mystery is slightly better than its solution). Wish they'd make more like these.