By the end of The 400 Blows we see young Jean-Pierre Leaud looking out to the sea to an uncertain future after he escaped from juvenile detention.In Stolen Kisses, we catch up with him as a young adult trying to find a place in life but hopelessly all at sea.Antoine Doinel plays Jean-Pierre Leaud as geeky, gawky, awkward, and rebellious.He has been dishonourably discharged from the army. He gets a telling off from his superior office about the youth of today. Antoine pulls funny faces at this point to highlight his nonchalant attitude. Antoine then proceeds to steal his uniform, go back to Paris and have sex with a prostitute.Antoine then goes to see his on/off girlfriend who he has not written to to for some time when he was at the army. We suspect that she is seeing someone else and we later note that she is also being followed.Antoine who is uneducated, lacking a lot of skills even common sense haphazardly goes through a series of jobs. He becomes a night- watchman at a hotel which lasts one night because he was blagged by a private detective. Luckily the detective gets him a job at his detective agency. Although he learns some skills he is still inept but he is planted at Tobard's shoe shop as the boss wants to know what his staff think about him. Like the film The Graduate, the boss's older wife has designs for him.All the time he has this on/off relationship with bourgeois beautiful girlfriend Christine which blows hot and cold. She seems aloof and distant one minute and desires him the next. He also has trouble relating to her, I never understood why he never wrote to her for months when he was in the army. At one point Antoine takes her out to a stakeout when following a magician and leaves her behind at a club.For someone who was a detective Antoine does not realise that Christine is being stalked by someone else.The film is a screwball comedy about love and obsession and two young people getting together awkwardly at a time when the young people of France felt displaced.Again François Truffaut is well served by his alter-ego Antoine Doinel who has the boyish, charming and goofy quality that brings out the humour. His persona is different from The 400 Blows where we felt that he might end up being a petty criminal lost in some underclass.

Stolen Kisses is a film unlike any other, perhaps because it combines so many elements into such a breezy film experience. Though Francois Truffaut broke into the film industry with his debut The 400 Blows depicting the young, misplaced Antoine Doinel as a youth attempting to find his way amidst the chaos of Paris, Stolen Kisses might be a more mature and understanding film to its protagonist. Like Antoine, Truffaut has grown up.This adventure follows Antoine's departure from the army and his attempt to find steady work in Paris, that gorgeous and timeless city with the ethereal Sacre Coeur looming in the background. He goes through a number of professions, all of which are completely captivating in their interest to us the audience and Antoine himself. Tying all this together is his constant affection for the girl he left for the army, Christine, who very well may hold the key to his heart. What is so endlessly fascinating about this film is the stark simplicity Truffaut films it in. Like his previous work, this film has remarkable fluid camera movements as he gives us a breathtaking view of the eternal city and the journey Antoine is on in hopes of discovering his place. We are dropped into various situations such as a small hotel, a private detective agency and a TV repair truck, all of which are Antoine's attempts to find stability in a most unstable of times: Paris, 1968. What must be said about this remarkable film is that it is at its core a most personal story. Clearly, Antoine represented Truffaut in The 400 Blows and he does here. From adolescence to teen angst to young adulthood, Truffaut has shown us in three examples an everyman many of us can relate to. He is self-conscious, anxious, awkward around women yet tries to do the best he can. In Truffaut's eyes, and ours, this is the source of his innocence and charm.

Perhaps I wasn't meant to view this two days after falling in love with The 400 Blows; as nine years actually expire between the two films. I'm half an hour into it (after also viewing Antoine et Colette) and I'm not pleased. I had no urge to see Antoine grow into a spindly, nervous, timid, tentative, inept bourgeoisie. His job arc and whimsy are certainly not what I craved more detail about after the first movie. I didn't need to see him adrift in his 20s with no charisma, and making friends with the parents of girls who won't date him. (!?) Here he's become super feminized. I can't stand his stupid haircut, and the swagger that he had an adolescent is gone.This is not the adult that was implied/promised by the adolescent. I really would have liked to see Doinel's story arc resume more immediately after the age he was in the 400 Blows. The phase that transitions Doinel to the period shown here is what I would have found interesting.I could barely get through this. I doubt I'll watch the rest of the series now. I cannot imagine, given Truffaut's own comments about film, where he imagined the merit of this was. I see no difference in this and other shallow sequels that try to cash in. I also see no art in this. How could he take his own work and make it so trite? Truffaut used to talk about keeping faith with the viewer. What did that mean to him if could make this? I would have preferred if he had just killed Doinel off to save the character and audiences from this. He was extraordinary. Now he's shockingly average and unbelievably annoying. He was heroic. Now he's nothing. I liked the kid. I hate this character. What I've read about Truffaut's own life has moved me more than this. Nothing is as aggravating to me as squandered talent. This is the worst sequel I have ever seen. It's also an ugly, ugly looking film.

A dweeb who lacks charisma gets dishonorably discharged from the army, and then goes through a series of different jobs and women. This is as much plot as you'll get in this typical French (read = European) drama without a plot or a real point.But hang on. After finishing the movie, I was informed by various movie catalogs that this is a comedy. Comedy?!! Leonard Maltin calls this an "alternately touching and hilarious film". Touching and hilarious? What movie was he watching??? I tell you, there is absolutely NOTHING touching about this movie. The movie is emotionally uninvolving. And there wasn't one funny moment in the entire picture – unless you consider French humour funny. In fact, French humour is so unfunny that it is difficult for the non-connoisseur to even identify which bits are supposed to be funny. Maltin was probably referring, for example, to the early scene when an elderly detective catches a customer's wife cheating on him with another man. Is this supposed to be funny? Good Lord, if this is funny what isn't? It's a badly-directed scene with bad acting, absurd reactions by the characters, haphazardly put together. And that's funny… Maltin further "informs" us that the dweeb is "inept but likable". Likable?! This man is so charismatic he makes the likes of Kyle MacLachlan seem like Sean Connery of Clark Gable by comparison. In another movie catalog I am informed that the dweeb is more-or-less Truffaut himself, i.e. the movie is autobiographical. Fair enough. If Truffaut was a dweeb, that's his problem. I am also informed by BOTH reviews that this movie is considered as Truffaut's best by many!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are his other movies like then… Don't get me wrong. The movie is by no means a disaster. It is watchable, which is the most important thing, and the photography is solid. But there is nothing here that will make you laugh (unless you laugh at other French films), and there is certainly nothing touching here. The dweeb sleeps with prostitutes, falls in "love" easily, flirts for years with a girl who is probably frigid and played by an actress who is probably even less interesting than he is. A stone-faced actress. Which brings me to the acting. Some of the cast aren't particularly good. And Truffaut, the "great director", occasionally offers us scenes that are, for want of a better word, "off". There is clumsiness in the editing, and clumsiness in scenes with many characters.If you could just forget that this was done by one of the supposed "greats of cinema", and watch this without knowing anything about the movie, you'd have to be lying if you thought this was anything but an average movie.By the way, Maltin also calls this "one of the best treatments of young love ever put on the screen". This comes from a man who thinks that "Teenage Caveman" is a better movie than "Blade Runner". 'Nuff said.(Sick and tired of bad European dramas? Email me, and I'll send you my altered subtitles for various Bergman films, plus "Der Untergang".)