Monday 27 January 2014

Domicile Conjugal / Bed and Board (1970 François Truffaut)

Two years later, Doinel is married to Christine, and busily engaged in changing the colours of flowers! I can't at the moment identify the little apartment block (the address she gives for the taxi, 17 Rue Descazes, seems made up?)*, which has an interesting private courtyard set off a busy street. Certainly the various occupants remind me a little of Rear Window. Absolutely as good as the preceding three episodes.

Packed with great details and incidents, viz:

The apartment block's 'strangler'.
Antoine's totally pointless job piloting model ships.
A 'friend' who keeps borrowing money.
Antoine's boredom in meal at which he keeps making telephone calls.
The opera singer who is always on time but whose wife isn't.

And why shouldn't Truffaut speed up the shot of flower petals opening to reveal their secrets?


With Madamoiselle Hiroko. Written by Truffat, Claude Givray and Bernard Revon. Distinctive music as before by Antoine Duhamel, and edited by Agnès Guillemot. This is the second of several collaborations with cinematographer Néstor Almendros.

* I later learn in de Baeque / Toubiana's excellent biography Truffaut that it's in Sèvres-Babylone in the sixth. Which in turn takes me here where our French cinéastes identify the address as 133 Rue de Sèvres. Thanks!

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