The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

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Neil LaBute
The Soft Skin
Neil LaBute’s appreciation for one of François Truffaut’s darker, often overlooked
films makes a kind of sense. There’s LaBute’s penchant for somber
tones, but the influence goes deeper. He points out that In the Company of
Men and Your Friends & Neighbors pay homage to The Soft Skin. LaBute says
even The Mercy Seat, a play he worked on, also contains clear evidence of
Truffaut’s effect on him.
For LaBute, The Soft Skin was a new and different approach to portraying
both reality and New Wave filmmaking. He says, “I’ve never been one
to love the camera or even to be as drawn to it as I am to the human front
of it. . . . I think [The Soft Skin] was a film that speaks in a very simple way
of here’s a way that you can tell a story on film in human terms. It was the
kind of film that made me go, ‘I could do this; I want to tell stories that are
like this and told in this way.’ And so it was altering for me in that way, in its
simplicity or deceptive simplicity.”
Neil LaBute, selected filmography:
In the Company of Men (1997)
Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
Nurse Betty (2000)
Possession (2002)
The Shape of Things (2003)
The Wicker Man (2006)
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
Death at a Funeral (2010)
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