Tue 5 Jan 2016
A Noir Movie Review: CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS [Vivement dimanche!] (1983).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[12] Comments
CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS. Films A2/Les Films du Carrosse/Soprofilms, 1983. France, 1983. Original title: Vivement dimanche! Also released as Finally, Sunday! Fanny Ardant, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Philippe Laudenbach, Philippe Morier-Genoud, Caroline Sihol, Georges Koulouris. Screenwriters: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Jean Aurel, based on the novel The Long Saturday Night by Charles Williams. Director: François Truffaut.
This was François Truffaut’s final film; he died soon after it was finished. Filmed in black and white, it was intended as an homage to fellow director, Alfred Hitchcock, but I suspect that close eyes watching would spot a sizable amount of other inspirational material.
I’ve not read the novel in many years, so I’m relying on summaries of the book I’ve found online as well as my probably unreliable memory, but the novel goes something like this: A businessman returns from a duck hunting trip only to learn that a fellow member of the club has been shot and killed in the same area. He’s accused of the crime, since it is widely suspected that the man was having an affair with is wife. When she is also found murdered, he’s the one immediately accused of both crimes.
It is only with the help of his very efficient secretary that he is able to clear himself, during the passage of one long tense Saturday night. (If I have any of this wrong, please do correct me.)
The film follows the story very closely, at least as far as the outline goes that I’ve supplied you above. I don’t remember the book well enough to tell you whether the same person is the killer or not.
Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the businessman, and while Fanny Ardant is his secretary, getting top billing, perhaps surprisingly but deservedly so. She steals the show from beginning to end: a slim, full-lipped, beautiful brunette who is constantly on the move: if not walking, then running (like a girl). She even looks ravishing in a trenchcoat, and there is an extremely good reason why she is wearing a trenchcoat.
The book and the movie do diverge. The book was an out-and-out thriller. Although filmed in black and white, with lots of interesting camera angles, the movie is often played for humor if not comedy. The real estate broker and his secretary are always bickering. She is fired more than once, and if it were possible, she once says in exasperation that she would fire him.
Of course we all know what it means when a man and a woman in a movie are constantly battling each other, even though they are nominally on the same side. Unfortunately the two leading players don’t seem to have all that much attraction to each other. He is 20 years older, she may be four to five inches taller.
I enjoyed this one anyway, perhaps in a way because of the above, and I recommend it to you highly. I wish I could tell you that all of the loose ends are tied up at movie’s end, but since I watched the film with subtitles (quite small and often white on white), I found myself concentrating more on reading the words than following all of the action. I will tell you this. If I find the time to watch this movie again, I most certainly will. I will also start looking for any other films that Fanny Ardant may have made. What does that tell you?
January 5th, 2016 at 7:16 pm
Look for her in AFRAID OF THE DARK (with James Fox and Paul McGann), RIDICULE, COLONEL CHABERT, THE DINNER, ELIZABETH (Mary of Guise with Cate Blanchettin title role), 8 WOMEN (a musical Agatha Christie style mystery also with Catherine Denuve, Emmanuelle Beart, Dannielle Darriiex, Isabelle Huppert, and Ludvine Sagnier), THE SCENT OF BLOOD, and as Alexandra in RASPUTIN (2010).
I agree this film is as much a romantic comedy as a thriller. The first time I saw it I thought she and Trintigant ill matched, but on later viewings I think part of the attraction of the film is these two ill matched people who have an almost unconscious bond despite their problems. Their relationship resembles one of those marriages where everyone on the outside wonders what keeps them together, and both Williams and Truffaut are commenting on the ‘office wife’ phenomena.
It is faithful enough to the book, but of course Williams, who was more popular and better known in France than here as a noir writer, was writing suspense and Truffaut is doing something else as he did in THE BRIDE WORE BLACK.
Ardant is wonderful here, gorgeous, smart, sexy, yet never unbelievably so and she has some of that coltish awkwardness of Rosalind Russell in HIS GIRL FRIDAY. In fact I suspect Truffaut had the relationship between Russell and Grant in that film in mind when he cast Trintigant and Ardant.
January 5th, 2016 at 7:46 pm
I’ve never seen the movie, but I read the book in its Gold Medal incarnation, long, long ago. I used to see the edition in your illustration all the time, but I never picked up a copy.
January 5th, 2016 at 9:51 pm
I vaguely remember the arthouse run of this one, but haven’t seen it nor read the novel yet.
Hey, irrelevantly…did you authorize the highjacking of your page views for the nonprofit ad service? However noble the cause, they’re as annoying as hell.
January 5th, 2016 at 10:04 pm
??? If it’s something I’ve done and/or can undo, let me know.
January 5th, 2016 at 10:17 pm
Bill, #2
Your comment confused me, but then I realized that the cover of this Penguin paperback edition matches the poster at the bottom of the review almost completely:
January 5th, 2016 at 10:22 pm
David, #1
If someone who looks like Fanny Ardent can be attracted to someone who looks like Jean-Louis Trintignant, then in another lifetime, there is hope for me.
January 5th, 2016 at 10:30 pm
PS. Thanks to your suggestion, I’ve just purchased a DVD copy of 8 WOMEN. I’ll keep the rest of your list very handy indeed.
January 6th, 2016 at 5:15 am
I thought I had the book around here somewhere, but a search of my vast, well-organized (HAH!) shelves came up blank. So now I gotta try and find the book AND the film. Thanks a lot, Steve.
January 6th, 2016 at 4:15 pm
Actually Trintigant was a sex symbol long before Ardant. Remember A MAN AND A WOMAN? This is a bit of a Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn CHARADE teaming.
French leading men are a mixed bag looks wise, for every Alain Delon or Jean Pierre Aumont there is a Yves Montand, Jean Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura, Trintigant, Cassel, or Jean Gabin.
January 6th, 2016 at 9:27 pm
CHARADE was a very enjoyable and successful mystery movie, but in my opinion it was in spite of the age difference between Grant and Hepburn. I didn’t swallow it all. I am probably in a very small minority on this.
January 7th, 2016 at 6:37 pm
I just think that might have been what they were going for in a small way casting Trintigant and Ardant.
January 7th, 2016 at 6:54 pm
Oh, yes, I realize that. See my comment #6.