It is very difficult for us, those who admired and loved François Truffaut to judge the 1983 ‘Vivement Dimanche!‘ (the English title is ‘Confidentially Yours‘ without taking into account the ruthless label that fate has attached to it: his last film! It’s not Truffaut‘s best film or even his most original film. One of his first and best films, ‘Shoot the Piano Player‘, had explored the film noir genre more than two decades before and used the same style of black and white cinematography with a predilection for night scenes. Truffaut‘s friendship and admiration for Alfred Hitchcock and his fascination with his art are well known. ‘Vivement Dimanche!‘ it is also considered a tribute to him, but it is more than that. The director seems not only to quote from his master, but to borrow, analyse, dismantle and reconstruct some of his methods. I don’t know if when he was filming ‘Vivement Dimanche!‘ Truffaut knew about his illness or realised its severity, but it does not look at all like a testament film, on the contrary, it is a film that experiments with means of cinematic expression, taking over and respectfully continuing a tradition with which the director was very familiar. Perhaps because of this film, Truffaut‘s career gives the feeling that ‘the film was interrupted in the middle of the screening’ and that there was still so much to say.
‘Vivement Dimanche!‘ it is one of those films from which viewers have a chance to remember isolated fragments and frames rather than the ensemble at some time after watching. No wonder, because thestory is extremely conventional, and has a lot of unlikely aspects. This is apparently a police intrigue, a mystery surrounding who is the perpetrator of a series of crimes, what Americans call a ‘whodunit’, but the director’s attention is focused more on the relationship between the main suspect, a real estate agent played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and his secretary played by Fanny Ardant who undertakes the investigation that could prove his innocence while he is hiding. It is clear, however, that the director was more interested in the stylistic aspects and especially the reuse of some noir films from the 40s and 50s – the black and white cinematography, the phones, the raincoats, the close-ups with background contrasts. However, these are combined with some of Truffaut‘s recurring passions and themes – the cinema theatre that plays a significant role in the film (including the poster and the mentioning in a dialogue of a Stanley Kubrick film, which in perspective acquires the significance of passing of the torch), the theatre and especially the fascination for women that he shared with Hitchcock. The penultimate scene is exceptional and the master would have included it in his films, including the text, which is a kind of farewell, even if it is uttered by a murderer. “Everything I did was out of love for women.” Adieu, François Truffaut.
