Confidentially Yours (1984)

Better Late Then Never

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

FINALLY, Sunday! is one of the many films made by French auteur Francois Truffaut, shot in black and white. This one's a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Hitchcockian themes throughout, and it has a lightness of touch similar to Hitch's work of the 1930s. However, in the heavy hands of Truffaut I found it something of a chore to watch; the director's approach is to eke out every little bit of every little scene and the result is long-winded and oddly seriously despite the lightness of the subject matter. It's as if the director has been so painstaking that all the fun is taken out of the production.

Truffaut did some beautiful movies and this, along with La femme d'à coté, is a favorite. The B&W gives the film ambiance, Fanny Ardent gives the film grace. She's the heart and soul of the film and is in very good company. The plot is smart and full of twists - will keep you hooked to the end. What initially appears to be another passion crime unfolds into the secret relationships of the deceased, into the underworld, and into the many abilities of a secretary that happens to be in love with the boss. The movie is very instigating in showing a feminist approach to crime solving, where, surprisingly, the heroin is ready to stand rather strong abuse. Well worth bearing the legends if you can't handle French.

I was a bit disappointed by this movie. I expected a complex drama in the Hitchcock style but I got a mediocre story more like a Hitchcock TV presentation. It isn't a bad movie. It's more a vehicle for Fanny Ardant. She is a pleasure to watch and listen to. Jean-Louis Trintignant was also good. The writing wasn't all that great. The plot was simplistic and some scenes were clunky.

Confidentially Yours aka Vivement Dimanche is a spoof/tribute to noir/detective/Hitchcock films. Someone (it won't take you long to figure out who) commits a brutal murder and the police suspect Jean Louis Trintignant ( a real estate agent) but his secretary (a girl Friday he has just fired, perfectly played by Fanny Ardant--whose movie this is) investigates (dressed in a trench coat -- why she must wear a trench coat is one of the gags), determined to clear him.It is a shaggy dog because it piles on the clues, close scrapes, crimes, etc. at ten times the rate of the films it salutes. It is a greyhound because it must get all that into 110 minutes, which it does with zest and comic theatricality (referenced of course by the subplot of a comic theatrical performance being given by Ardant's amateur theater group).As film making it would have been a lot fresher if it had been made in 1964 rather than 1984, but that should not effect your viewing experience of an expertly made madcap mystery. I would have preferred the film in color. I know why it is in black and white, but it does not seem to me to have any particular aesthetic merit as a black and white film. While no masterpiece, it was perhaps not a bad way to end a directorial career with a loving look back to all those great mysteries and screwball comedies of yore.