Wick's Review

Summary - OK 2.5

François Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women hasn’t aged well. Perhaps that happens to every Lothario. It certainly seems to happen to movies about them. Nonetheless, this famous French film carries a certain fascination given that it was created by the legendary auteur behind the Auteur Theory.

If only it was a good movie. It’s not bad, just somewhat tedious, with obvious “insights” and very little joy.

Acting - Good 3.0

Charles Denner plays the driven womanizer of the title with a certain grim determination. He may love women, but he certainly doesn’t evince any joy from the chase, the seductions or anything else in his life.

The women run together, even more so to a non-French viewer some 35 years after the movie was made.

Film - OK 2.5

Truffaut’s film is studded with pearls of punchy writing, as when a previously resistant girl tells her seducer to give her “a real kiss” or when his leading man says that “to write is to expose yourself to criticism.” This last is especially self-referential, given that Truffaut was a film critic before becoming a writer-director. And not just any critic, but the cocreator of the theory that posited filmmakers as the authors their films.

Edge - Risqué 1.8

Barely R-rated by modern standards. Cover up the occasional bare breast and it’s PG-13.

Reality - Glib 1.3

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