Wednesday, 29 November 2006

Vivement Dimance! (1983)

This French film known by its English titles as "Finally Sunday" or "Confidentially Yours" was director Francois Truffaut's last shout, and not really a high point of his illustrious career.  Presumably conceived as a pastiche homage to the film noir genre, it is even shot in black and white with no great distinction.  Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an estate agent suspected of the murder of his wife's lover, the first of a run of murders which the cops would like to lay at his door, but it is pretty clear from get-go that he is not our killer.  It is down to his recently fired secretary-cum-Girl-Friday, sparklingly played by Fanny Ardant to track down the real culprit (whose identity is hardly a big surprise).  Trintignant is so laid-back and feeble in this role that one wonders at his casting, despite his long history with Truffaut; Ardant, however, just about makes the movie watchable.  It is all, in the end, extremely silly and uninvolving, and hardly the Hitchcock tribute that some critics read into it. 

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