The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

The Soft Skin
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It’s really that striking denouement of the gunshot that makes the difference
that people kind of can’t help but remember. But it really is conventional
in its day, and perhaps that’s what people reacted to, that it was both
cold and modern and yet the morality of it was fairly conventional.
The New York Times called it “a curiously crude and hackneyed drama
to come from Mr. Truffaut.” Sight & Sound wrote, “There have been
plenty of films about adultery, but few have ventured to take the mechanism
so methodically to pieces.”
LaBute: I would embrace that. I didn’t see it as hackneyed at all, but that’s
the beauty of it. It’s subjective, and they can very well think that, and I can
think something different.
This was also the first film in what is called his “Hitchcock cycle.”
There were four films that he was working on while he was interviewing
Alfred Hitchcock for his famous book.
LaBute: I think that’s quite evident in the work, just the appearance of this
woman who’s somewhat unattainable and the kind of voyeuristic side of
it—there are great passages of silence in the piece punctuated by some of the
most beautiful music, a great score. One of Georges Delerue’s best, I think,
and he made so many.
I think the influences are kind of obvious, and yet less so than say, The
Bride Wore Black or Mississippi Mermaid. There’s the use of unexpected
humor, that distinctive second act, where it’s almost farcical—there’s running
back and forth between hotels, and his desire to be with her, and
yet having to uphold this rigid code of civility with these people who are
essentially paying the tab for him being there. That’s that kind of great
section, and it stands out from the rest of the piece. But there’s absolutely a
layer that is shellacked over that kind of proceeding, the tawdry aspect of
essentially a decent guy, and a guy who wants it to be romantic and for no
one to be hurt, and yet he’s running around like a bumbling fool. I think
that’s an important aspect, if that wasn’t there, that kind of deft handling of
that passage. Without it, you would have a much more conventional film.
The least electrifying aspect of the whole thing of course is the actual
physical contact. Truffaut shies away from that continually. Probably the