Stolen Kisses was the third entry in a cycle of five films (or 4.5, since one was a short) by François Truffaut featuring the troubled Antoine Doinel played by Truffaut protégé Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Historical Background: François Truffaut's debut film, the highly acclaimed autobiographical gem The 400 Blows (1959), first introduced film audiences to the rebellious young Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud). There he was the disobedient misfit who ends up in reform school, but retains his spirit and ultimately escapes into a final renowned freeze-frame. Truffaut decided to return to his alter ego, Antoine, three years later so that moviegoers could check in on Doinel and find out how he was doing at age twenty. That second installment of the Antoine Doinel cycle is known either as Antoine and Colette or Love at Twenty (1962). Like its predecessor, this new film was semi-autobiographical, telling the story of its protagonist's inept pursuit of the ravishingly beautiful Colette, but finding better success in relating to her parents than the young lady.

Another six years would then pass before Truffaut once again returned to his Antoine character, again casting Léaud in the recurrent role. For this film, however, only the opening segment continued in the semi-autobiographical vein of the earlier films, after which the Doinel persona begins to take on more the character of the actor Léaud than the writer and director Truffaut. In that sense, the third film represents a true coming of age for Léaud, who had grown up somewhat in the shadow of his illustrious mentor but was now prepared to soar into the cinematic stratosphere as his own person. Truffaut later completed the cycle with Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). For those so inclined, the full cycle can be purchased as a magnificent, though pricey, set from Criterion (see Epinions listing at The Adventures of Antoine Doneil).

Stolen Kisses was a departure from the preceding films of the cycle in another respect as well. The first two films were mainly dramas spiced with a bit of black humor here and there, but Stolen Kisses was a comparatively lightweight romantic comedy with just a hint of deeper meaning. Stolen Kisses was truly a collaboration between Truffaut and Léaud in that the script provided for a great deal of improvisation. This was quite fortunate for Truffaut because the time during which Stolen Kisses was shot coincided with Truffaut's one foray into political activism.

Truffaut was probably the least political of the New Wave directors, being somewhat of a misanthrope, more inclined to his insular world of cinema than French politics. An event occurred, however, in February 1968, that shook Truffaut's world to its core. Delegates of the Ministry of Culture fired the founder and longtime director of the Cinémathèque Français, Henri Langlois, so that they could replace him with a functionary more loyal to the Gaullist agenda. Langlois was something of a mentor and father figure for the New Wave filmmakers but, worse, the move was rightly understood as an effort on the part of the French government to suppress the independence of the arts. Truffaut organized a boycott of Cinémathèque Français, which depended on permissions from directors to screen their films. The boycott quickly spread throughout the French film industry and, later, drew international support from the likes of Charles Chaplin. The conflict ultimately resulted in the closing down of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival when Jean-Luc Godard, Roman Polanski, and some other supporters of Langlois literally hung on the curtains to prevent the screening of films (see All Seventy-Seven Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or Winners).

The Story: After going AWOL (absent without leave) repeatedly, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is declared unfit for military service and discharged almost directly from the brig. (That much of the film that was based on Truffaut's own experience.) Returning to Paris (the Montmartre bohemian district), Antoine stops at the home of his sometimes girlfriend, Christine Dardon (Claude Jade). She is away on a ski trip, but (true to form) Antoine relates so well with her parents that Monsieur Dardon (Daniel Ceccaldi) has soon landed Antoine a job as a night watchman at a hotel. Christine looks Antoine up when she returns and invites him to dinner with her family. Antoine very quickly loses his job at the hotel when he unwittingly helps a private detective interrupt a tryst between a woman and her lover so that the husband, Monsieur Colin (Jacques Rispal), will have proof of her infidelity, presumably for a better divorce settlement. The detective takes pity of Antoine, having cost the young man his job, and sets him up with employment at the Blady Detective Agency.

Antoine soon proves to have no more natural talent as a private investigator than as a night watchman. He is laughably inept at tailing, first, a woman and, later, a magician, who manages to make himself "disappear." Monsieur Blady is at a loss to find an assignment that Antoine can't botch until Georges Tabard shows up with an odd kind of request. Monsieur Tabard (Michael Lonsdale) owns a shoe shop that caters to upscale women, is successful, and is married to the stunningly attractive Fabienne Tabard (Delphine Seyrig). His problem is that his salesgirls seem to despise him and openly sass him when he makes simple requests. He wants to know why. Blady comes up with the idea of having Tabard hire Antoine, in the guise of a stock boy, so that he can get to know the salesgirls and learn why they feel as they do about their boss. Blady places an advertisement, so that the girls won't suspect Antoine's true purpose, and five young men, including Antoine, compete in a package wrapping assignment. Although Antoine's wrapping job is by far the most inept, he, of course, lands the job.

Antoine makes a bit of progress in his assignment at the shoe shop until he runs into the inestimably fabulous Fabienne. Antoine is quickly gaga over this apparition, rhapsodizing with such enthusiasm about her silky skin in his report to the agency that his colleague observes, "We want a report – not a declaration of love!" When Fabienne overhears a couple of salesgirls discussing how Antoine's infatuation has even affected his color, she is hot to trot with the young man, since her affection for Monsieur Tabard is about on a par with that of the salesgirls. Thus, instead of advancing the agency's job for the client, Antoine ends up bedding his wife. Antoine is thus out of another job – just about the same time that another one of the agency's clients, a hand-wringing, one-gloved neurotic homosexual named Albani (Albert Simono), goes berserk when he is informed that the magician (his former lover) has run off and married (oh horror!!) a woman.

From ace detective, Antoine moves on to a job as television repairman, which allows the resourceful Christine an opportunity to rekindle their on-again off-again relationship by the expedient of disabling the family's television set when her parents are away for the weekend. Obviously the television set ends up all the worse for Antoine's inept repair effort, but the happy couple nevertheless ends up in the sack. In the morning, Christine obligingly teaches Antoine how to properly butter his toast. The young couple is soon engaged, via a brief exchange of hurriedly scribbled notes, at the breakfast table. Later, their romantic tête à tête in the park is briefly interrupted by Christine's stalker, whose declaration of definitive love to the woman he has never so much as met is all too reminiscent of Antoine's own naïve romanticism.

Themes: Stolen Kisses is thematically sparse territory by the standards of the preceding entries in the Antoine Doinel cycle. Antoine learns a few lessons about love and women that would take a lot less time for anyone else to grasp – anyone, that is, less absorbed in self-centered angst. He discovers that women are not idealized apparitions that can be placed up on a pedestal. Christine had failed to meet Antoine's elevated standard of romantic devotion when she neglected to respond to all nineteen letters he had sent her during one week in the army. It takes Fabienne, the quintessential older woman who he had idealized, to explain that she has to powder her nose and mask blemishes like everyone else, but that if he can let go off his notion of her perfection for two hours, she'll be happy to bounce around with him just this one time in his bed.

Antoine himself is an incorrigibly selfish misfit, trying to find a place in the world that will require minimal constraint on his impulses. To me, Antoine is an unappealing character because he is fundamentally a hypocrite, demanding near-perfection from his lovers but unable to set even basic standards for his own behavior or for self-improvement. Antoine is something of a male version of Bridget Jones. Like Antoine, Truffaut demanded more of others (as a film-critic) than of himself (as a filmmaker). From Doinel and Truffaut's vantage point of self-absorption, this existential gem is what passes for wisdom: "Making love is a way of compensating for death. You need to prove that you still exist." By this reckoning, the partner is irrelevant, which hardly qualifies as "making love" anywhere but France.

I read an article in the local newspaper this autumn decrying the number of sit-coms on American television this year that featured unattractive, unintelligent, and lazy men with gorgeous, superwoman wives – as if any beer-guzzling, coach-potato, slob of a man was somehow entitled to his own junior Miss America for a partner. Stolen Kisses strikes me as in that same vein. Antoine is something of a wimpy kind of guy, sincere but not especially competent, with an underdeveloped personality and little understanding of life, yet his main struggle in the film is choosing between two incredibly gorgeous and personable women. We guys should all have such problems!

Production Values: I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Truffaut is just not an especially good match for my tastes. This is my sixth Truffaut review and I have previously rated three of his films at four-stars (The 400 Blows, The Story of Adele H., and Jules and Jim), but this film and two others (Day for Night and Two English Girls) I found distinctly wanting. Since my selections have generally drawn from the most critically acclaimed Truffaut films, I suspect I've about run out of opportunities to derive enjoyment from this particular director.

Stolen Kisses has its share of positive regard from other reviewers. I've tried to discover what it might be that I'm missing in my experience with this film. The positive views seem to center on three kinds of comments. (1) Antoine's awkward, yet determined climb uphill represents cinema's greatest coming of age story.. My view: It certainly represents cinema's longest coming of age story, but therein lies the problem. Antoine never truly comes of age. He simply turns into an immature adult, as lost in his self-centered impulsivity at twenty and twenty-six (and beyond) as any adolescent. There are many better coming-of-age stories in which the protagonists actually do finally come-of-age. All of his women understandably give up on him by the end of the full cycle. (2) Antoine remains one of film history's most enduring characters, a shameless romantic who longs for perfection in his affairs with women and work. My view: What Antoine longs for is perfection from others but only self-absorbed impulsivity from himself. (3) There are touches of whimsy and melancholy. and, elsewhere, The lightness of the film is its greatest quality. My view: yes, There is a breezy whimsy to it all, but no more than one can expect from a second-rate situation comedy on network television.

The camera work is uneven. Some scenes are poorly lit and none are spectacular. Léaud does give one of his better performances. After all, he is essentially playing himself in this film. I've said elsewhere that my feeling is that Léaud has little range as an actor and is successful only when the part fits the only performance he knows how to deliver – himself. The two lead women do as well or better with their lesser roles. Delphine Seyrig, who played the blond bombshell Fabienne, had other roles in Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Muriel (1963), Accident (1967), and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972). Claude Jade was quite a find for Truffaut. This was her debut film, playing Christine, but she went on to roles in such films as Topaz (1969) and Love on the Run (1979).

Bottom-Line: I wasn't impressed. This film is billed as romantic comedy or farce but the comedy seemed quite feeble to me. I laughed once – at the sight of little Antoine strolling down a sidewalk with a date on his arm, 6-8 inches taller than himself. The verbal humor was flat and the situational humor not even up to network television standards. As for the "harsh truths disguised as light jokes" and the "truthful portrait of ordinary life" – I don't think so. This is one portrait of life from the vantage point of a self-absorbed, hedonistic, sometimes charming boy-man. That may be ordinary enough in Paris, but not all over the world.

The DVD version from Fox Lorber has filmographies and awards, scene access, a tribute to Jean-Pierre Léaud, and a collection of Truffaut trailers. Stolen Kisses is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 90 minutes.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older