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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781572526037
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 1572526033
Label: Fox Lorber
Manufacturer: Fox Lorber
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Release Date: October 12, 1999
Running Time: 118 minutes
Sales Rank: 62620
Studio: Fox Lorber
Theatrical Release Date: 1964
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
François Truffaut's cool, creamy-smooth melodrama of a doomed affair sets the lush romanticism of exciting indiscretion in a world where sudden stabs of ominous music hint at a tragedy in the making. Jean Desailly is a famous literary critic and publisher who becomes entranced with the lithe, strikingly beautiful flight attendant (Françoise Dorleac) who keeps crisscrossing his path while he's away on a speaking engagement. He's middle-aged, successful, and seemingly happily married with a wife and daughter, but he plunges ahead with an affair, careful to avoid friends and familiar places. The Soft Skin is not really a thriller, but Truffaut invests it with Hitchcockian echoes of guilt and fear of discovery, and he meticulously plots scenes with the precision of a heist film. Pulling back the veneer of chic elegance and attractive confidence, Desailly emerges not so much sordid as vain and pathetic, and his wife (Nelly Benedetti) comes into her own with her heartbreaking discovery of his lies. At once angry, hurt, and threatened, she grasps at reconciliation while sabotaging her own efforts with frustrated attacks. It's an unusual film with sudden changes in tone that do little to prepare the viewer for the dark climax: the tragic side of Truffaut's fascination with philandering men that runs throughout his career. Fans will recognize the scene with the kitten who licks off the plate set out for room service--he re-created it in Day for Night. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Paris is not for us!
A successful businessman and affective husband meets an alluring airline stewardess in a flight to Lisboan. And as product of a kind invitation to dinner will emerge a torrid romance that will become an unstoppable passion, with the expected tragic consequences.
Truffaut uplifts this simple and so many times told before story to unexpected levels. The employment of the camera as a scrutinizing eye, makes we become true peeping Tom; the poetic of the images, the sublime visual eroticism ... Read More
Rating: - At least she shoots him and not herself.
Watched Truffaut's "Soft Skin" last night. Left a chalky aftertaste in my mouth although I think it might be one of Trouffaut's best films. Let me summarize the plot:
Successful, married, middle-age academic sleeps with stewardess he meets en route to a symposium in Lisbon. Continues to sleep with her when he returns to Paris as, like most men, he doesn't want o eat turkey sandwich every night of his life. Is it love? He thinks so. My observation: midlife crisis, bored with success and complacency ... Read More
Rating:  - Truffaut's soft touch
La Peau Douce/The Soft Skin is a very pleasant surprise indeed. There's a tendency in much of Truffauts' later work to be over-literate, often throwing in narration that plays more like a prose recital than thought or dialog to convey what he should be doing without it, but there's none of that here. Instead, its illicit romance is told in purely cinematic terms and telling details and, despite the potentially hackneyed material, plays beautifully, whether its the title sequence of two hands caressing in ... Read More
Rating: - Keeps you simultaneously glued to the narrative and fearful of the outcome.
Both intriguing and frustrating - the latter because you want to reach into the screen and slap the protagonist on the side of the head. The plot seems to go mostly nowhere, yet is thoroughly engrossing. Character development is not thorough, but situational development is both thorough and meticulous. A great psychological exposition. Unfortunately, almost no extras.
Rating: - All that Matters is The Soft Skin of The Woman You Love
When this film was released in 1964 it bombed commercially and was critically panned in every quarter, even booed at the Cannes Film Festival. Retrospective overviews and a more enlightened appreciation of Truffaut's entire body of work as a unit has done some good in enhancing its reputation, although not enough.
Truffaut was still being justly commended for his beautiful masterpiece JULES ET JIM when LA PEAU DUCE premiered, and the derision it met with can be attributed to the unfounded notion ... Read More
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