Domicile conjugal [Bed and Board] (1970)

(On TV, January 2021) Ever since watching the one-two punch of La nuit Américaine and Hitchcock/Truffault, I’ve felt that François Truffault is my favourite of the French Nouvelle Vague writers/directors. His love of classic Hollywood, wry humour and fascination for the nuts-and-bolts of cinema are very approachable, and he’d be a good pick for any round of fantasy dinner-party guests. I suspect that it’s that kind of kinship that led to the auteur theory of filmmaking—if a director has similar motifs, obsessions and expressive qualities as you do, it permeates all aspects of their filmmaking and ensures that you’ll find something of interest in nearly all of them. (Strangely enough, my least favourite Truffaut film is Les 400 coups, one of his first and certainly the best known of them.)  That’s my long-winded way of saying that while Domicile conjugal deals in wholly unremarkable subject matter—the tough first months of cohabitation between a newly married couple—, it does so in a way that is frequently interesting. Great dialogues, striking scenes (including the bedroom shot shown on the poster), likable actors (Jean-Pierre Léaud, but especially the beautiful Claude Jade, even more attractive with glasses) and Truffaut’s subtle humour make the film far more interesting than a dry plot summary or description of its downbeat third act would suggest. There are plenty of odds and ends and small jokes along the way, along with a dispiriting affair portrayed rather more amusingly than one would think. Alas, I ended up seeing Domicile Conjugal before its immediate predecessor Baisers volés, so a few callbacks to the earlier film showing the two leads’ courtship were definitely lost on me. I normally tune out films dwelling largely on small-scale domestic issues, but Domicile conjugal hooked me to an unexpected degree, and I’m blaming it all on Truffaut.