"The Soft Skin" (1964)

Has there ever been an adulterous affair as sweetly depicted as the one in The Soft Skin? Much credit for this is owed to director Francois Truffaut who tells the affair with a breezy lightheartedness that makes it all feel more straightforward and earnest than just about any affair has ever been portrayed. Truffaut never treats the affair as scandalous or worthy of judgement. In stead, Truffaut seems more concerned with getting inside the headspace of an affair from the giddy highs of getting away with something secret and naughty to the despairing lows of guilt and anxiety over getting caught. Truffaut probably doesn't spends enough time with the apparently crumbling marriage to really justify or get us to understand the motivations at work, but when he's showing two people caught up in the worldwind of desire, passion and reckless abandon he makes us feel as enthusiastic and excited as his characters. The sentimentality and the sweetness would feel out of place if they weren't in service of really digging into an affair and understanding how it can be simultaneously effervescent and volatile, built on the thinnest of foundations and all but ready to implode at any given moment, as it eventually, and inevitably, does in the film's knockout capping scene.

 Grade: ★★★