La peau douce (1964)

Calificación de los usuarios:

7.6/10   

Director:

François Truffaut

Escritores:

François Truffaut (screenplay) &
Jean-Louis Richard (screenplay)

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

20 abril 1964 (France)

Género:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married with Franca and father of Sabine, around 10. He meets an air hostess, Nicole. They start a love affair, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stand staying away from her.

Plot Keywords:

Love Affair | Reims | Adultery | Paris France | Motel

Premios:

1 win & 1 nomination

Comentarios de los usuarios:

Stolen moments

Reparto

Jean Desailly	...	Pierre Lachenay
Françoise Dorléac	...	Nicole (as Françoise Dorleac)
Nelly Benedetti	...	Franca Lachenay
Daniel Ceccaldi	...	Clément
Laurence Badie	...	Ingrid
Philippe Dumat	...	Directeur cinéma Reims
Paule Emanuele	...	Odile
Maurice Garrel	...	Bontemps
Sabine Haudepin	...	Sabine Lachenay
Dominique Lacarrière	...	La secrétaire Dominique
Jean Lanier	...	Michel
Pierre Risch	...	Chanoine
listado alfabético del resto del reparto:
François Truffaut	...	Le pompiste (voice)

También conocida como:

Angústia (Portugal)
The Soft Skin (USA)
La piel suave (Spain) [es]

Duración:

113 min | France:119 min (director's cut) | Portugal:110 min (cut version)

País:

France | Portugal

Idioma:

Francés | Portugués | Inglés

Color:

Negro y Blanco

Relación de Aspecto:

1.66 : 1

Sonido:

Mono

Clasificación:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | France:U | Sweden:15 | West Germany:12

Locaciones de Filmación:

Lisbon, Portugal

Compañía:

Les Films du Carrosse

Trivialidades:

The man who hassles Nelly Benedetti in the street is the co-writer of the film, Jean-Louis Richard. When they were filming, passers-by came to Benedetti's assistance and had to be fended off.

Errores:

Continuidad: Nicole changes out of her jeans at Pierre's request and we see her in her new outfit, but by the time they arrive at the hotel her blouse has also changed.

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in La nuit américaine (1973)

Banda de Sonido:

Symphonie de Jouets (Toy Symphony)

Stolen moments

"La Peau douce" is a profoundly melancholic film from François Truffaut. It depicts in restrained, plaintive tones an adulterous relationship between Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly), a middle-aged literary publisher of some renown, and Nicole (Françoise Dorléac), a much younger air stewardess. The narrative follows the relationship from its tentative beginnings in Lisbon, where Lachenay is giving a lecture, through a frustrating trip to Reims that resolves itself in an idyllic interlude at a countryside motel, to a return to Paris, reality, and a shattering conclusion. The film is also notable for the welter of incidental detail of the way modern life was lived back in the early sixties. Truffaut evidently had a fascination with the then relatively new phenomenon of international air travel, not to mention elevators, motor cars and electric lighting. Another point of interest is that the Lachenay's unusually designed apartment was in fact Truffaut's own, and its lived-in feel lends the scenes in which it's featured a pleasing sense of matter-of-fact realism that carries over to the rest of the movie.

Although the influence of Hitchcock is palpable in the measured takes and general sense of foreboding that pervades the entire movie, "La Peau douce" is not so much suspenseful as tense. Among the film's principle achievements is its incomparably sensitive rendering of the poignant mix of elation, anxiety and disconnection (from the world and, often, each other) that the lovers experience during their stolen moments together, as well as the anguish felt by the adulterous husband as his deceit begins to eat into his fifteen-year marriage to Franca (Nelly Benedetti). Lachenay, a buttoned-up bourgeois character straight out of Simenon, is quite brilliantly portrayed by Desailly. Outwardly a respectable, successful man, he is privately timid and fastidious. Utterly besotted with Nicole, he has a boyish fascination with her that makes him by no means unsympathetic, but at the same time he's self-centred and irritable, especially once he has got what he wants. In perfect counterpoint, Dorléac offers an unaffected, instinctive turn that embodies the bohemianism of the sixties. She's in the moment, where Desailly's Lachenay is struggling to be present even to himself. Benedetti's Franca, the third point of the triangle, tangibly embodies the psychic wounds of an unfulfilled marriage and, later, the seething rage of a scorned wife. But the character, though pivotal, is somewhat less fully developed than the other two, a slight weakness in the film arising possibly because Truffaut's heart, along with that of his co-writer Jean-Louis Richard, is manifestly with the lovers. Nevertheless you can virtually smell the stale odour of a marriage that seems irremediably reduced to small talk and petty quarrels. Truffaut is clearly not indifferent to the pain caused by marital breakdown, and he heightens the sense of tragedy by the simple inclusion of several naturalistic family scenes featuring the Lachenay's young daughter Sabine.

Unpopular on its release, and still an overlooked film in Truffaut's oeuvre, it feels in the best sense like the work of a much older man (he was a mere 32 when it premiered at Cannes). It achieves a simplicity and a depth without seeming to have had to strive for it. There's a quietly haunting score by Georges Delerue, and all the other technical contributions, not least Raoul Coutard's subdued black and white photography, are from the top drawer.