Truffaut Insurrected

“With (every) other activity, I betray film.” This masterful documentary portrait uses scenes from Truffaut’s films to illustrate almost every event in his life (or rather in his autobiography). But if you accept that the focus of the documentary is on Truffaut’s contradictory personality (an introverted intellectual with uncomfortable views who, for example, didn’t mind leading the filmmaking “revolution” at Cannes) rather than on his work, you will experience a pleasant fifty minutes in the company of Truffaut himself and people who were relatively close to him (as opposed to the absent film critics and historians, who might offer an unbiased perspective). It’s a shame that the documentary’s creators don’t incorporate much unique material from shooting and the filmmaker’s family archive (private letters) or scenes of Truffaut speaking into a more meaningful whole. After the introduction, which promises a chronological journey through his life, there is a shift to the crucial themes of his life and work (children and women), so that instead of continuing to tell his life story, the film goes into greater depth only in describing the kind of person that Truffaut was. The film will thus be appreciated rather by people who have already read something about the most watched director of the New Wave and will thus be able to put the confusingly distributed information into a consistent framework. (16/01/2016)