Vivement dimanche ! [Confidentially Yours] (1983)

(On Cable TV, December 2022) The only people to hold film noir in greater veneration than the Americans are the French, and Vivement Dimanche is not just writer-director François Truffaut’s last movie before his untimely death, it’s his ultimate homage to film noir. While not an out-and-out comedy (there are several murders after all), it’s light-hearted, ends on a sunny note and is far more audience-friendly than Truffault’s few previous films. You can almost feel the aging director easing a little bit, going back to his noir roots but without the doom-and-gloom expected of such a turn. It helps that there’s a strong mystery to chew on, with a plot that features old standbys such as adultery, mistaken accusations, gambling and an amateur sleuth’s investigation. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Fanny Ardant (Truffault’s lover at the time) are quite good, if not always likable, in the lead roles. I have misgivings about the way the male lead is written too dourly for the material, but that adds interest to Vivement Dimanche’s not-quite-conventional take on familiar film noir tropes. Despite Truffault’s obvious intent to pay homage (to Hitchcock, among other things), there are a lot of tweaks at work in this film, and they all add up to something interesting: a light murder story far more humanistic than you’d guess. Truffaut did not intend this to be his last film, but I suspect he would be amused that it ended up that way, so directly does it reach back to his early career.