Silken Skin review

A welcome reissue in a new print of one of the lesser-known French new wave gems.

Made in 1964, its director François Truffaut described this Hitchcockian tale of adultery triggering a crime passionnel as “a violent answer to Jules Et Jim,” his previous film about a love triangle.

Here, Jean Desailly plays Lachenay, a middle-aged Parisian writer who’s married to Franca (Nelly Benedetti), but who has an affair with air stewardess Nicole (Françoise Dorleac).

Strikingly shot in monochrome by Raoul Coutard and poignantly scored by Georges Delerue, Silken Skin (aka La Peau Douce) doesn’t spoon-feed us conventionally ‘sympathetic’ characters: instead, Truffaut plays up their fateful inability to communicate meaningfully in a modern urban world.