User reviews

"Delight has no Competitor, so it is always most." Emily Dickinson's epigram satisfyingly describes the sublime last film of François Truffaut "Vivement Dimanche!" 1983 ("Finally, Sunday" aka "Confidentially Yours"). It's a Hitchcockian thriller shot in black & white, with ("A Man and A Woman," "Trois Colours: Rouge") Jean Louis Trintignant as the man suspected of murder(s), and Fanny Ardant as his dedicated secretary going all out to investigate on her own.

It's becoming my best favorite Truffaut film besides "Fahrenheit 451" 1966, and "Stolen Kisses" 1968. Delightful comic rhythm they have, Ardant and Trintignant together, impeccably delivered this fun thriller like a dance between Astaire and Rogers.

Truffaut's thoughtful details abound. There's the dedication to Stanley Kubrick: at Cinema Eden, we see poster of his 1957's "Paths of Glory," which was once banned in France. There's mention of Vietnamese Restaurant. Ah, the "Rear Window" feeling when the pair poked around, entering a stranger's apartment. There's the use of Le Provençal car. And the 'killer' from Barbara's angle, we see the feet but not the face - who could it be? The variety of women characters: married woman, divorced woman, madam, sinister dealer, secretarial applicant, and Barbara.

Barbara is a brunette who looks dumb and smart all at once, insecure about herself yet so confident in her deductions, bold not shy, she's obstinately determined to get the 'killer' so to prove her boss, Trintignant's Julien (whom she secretly loves) innocent. Ardant is Barbara personified. It's so cool watching her moves and energetic responses with Trintignant matching her steps.

A truly colorful black and white light-hearted mystery. The fun is in the dialog and the repartee between the characters, including the detectives and the many phone calls. The delight is in the plot movement, suspenseful intrigue upon intrigue, continuing humor and surprise after surprise as we follow Ardant and Trintignant, even a kiss has a 'movie' reason.

Absolutely satisfying cinematic affair it is, entertaining complete with a melodic end music from Georges Delerue to go with the playful imagery behind the credits roll. I succumb, this is my best loved Truffaut film, "Vivement Dimanche!"

P.S. At times it brings to mind Woody Allen's 1993 "Manhattan Murder Mystery," while certain angles of Fanny Ardant reminds one of Geena Davis' profile.

As a brunette secretary, you're missing a ticked box, and now your job is drifting headlong into rocks, is your boss so homicidal, to kill his wife and her love idol, it's as perplexing as it is, a real flummox. You investigate and research what went down, it leads, to seedy places, around town, iniquities of noir, becomes increasingly bizarre, it's enough to make you scowl, glower and frown. It's not too long before your boss is apprehended, the police, are pretty sure, that he offended, can you get him off the hook, this older man you want to hug, as you desire to make him your future intended.

It's a more than satisfactory reproduction of an early 60s noir whodunit, but the shining light of Fanny Ardant consumes the darkness and casts a spell.

The most suitable movie in the 80's to be filmed in black-and-white. Masterfully directed by Francois Truffuat. Huge part smart, swift, suspenseful and surprising; interesting almost to the very end, (the mystery is slightly better than its solution). Wish they'd make more like these.

It is very difficult for us, those who admired and loved François Truffaut to judge the 1983 'Vivement Dimanche!' (the English title is 'Confidentially Yours' without taking into account the ruthless label that fate has attached to it: his last film! It's not Truffaut's best film or even his most original film. One of his first and best films, 'Shoot the Piano Player', had explored the film noir genre more than two decades before and used the same style of black and white cinematography with a predilection for night scenes. Truffaut's friendship and admiration for Alfred Hitchcock and his fascination with his art are well known. 'Vivement Dimanche!' it is also considered a tribute to him, but it is more than that. The director seems not only to quote from his master, but to borrow, analyse, dismantle and reconstruct some of his methods. I don't know if when he was filming 'Vivement Dimanche!' Truffaut knew about his illness or realised its severity, but it does not look at all like a testament film, on the contrary, it is a film that experiments with means of cinematic expression, taking over and respectfully continuing a tradition with which the director was very familiar. Perhaps because of this film, Truffaut's career gives the feeling that 'the film was interrupted in the middle of the screening' and that there was still so much to say.

'Vivement Dimanche!' it is one of those films from which viewers have a chance to remember isolated fragments and frames rather than the ensemble at some time after watching. No wonder, because thestory is extremely conventional, and has a lot of unlikely aspects. This is apparently a police intrigue, a mystery surrounding who is the perpetrator of a series of crimes, what Americans call a 'whodunit', but the director's attention is focused more on the relationship between the main suspect, a real estate agent played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and his secretary played by Fanny Ardant who undertakes the investigation that could prove his innocence while he is hiding. It is clear, however, that the director was more interested in the stylistic aspects and especially the reuse of some noir films from the 40s and 50s - the black and white cinematography, the phones, the raincoats, the close-ups with background contrasts. However, these are combined with some of Truffaut's recurring passions and themes - the cinema theatre that plays a significant role in the film (including the poster and the mentioning in a dialogue of a Stanley Kubrick film, which in perspective acquires the significance of passing of the torch), the theatre and especially the fascination for women that he shared with Hitchcock. The penultimate scene is exceptional and the master would have included it in his films, including the text, which is a kind of farewell, even if it is uttered by a murderer. "Everything I did was out of love for women." Adieu, François Truffaut.

I was a bit disappointed by this movie. I expected a complex drama in the Hitchcock style but I got a mediocre story more like a Hitchcock TV presentation. It isn't a bad movie. It's more a vehicle for Fanny Ardant. She is a pleasure to watch and listen to. Jean-Louis Trintignant was also good. The writing wasn't all that great. The plot was simplistic and some scenes were clunky.

Truffaut´s last film is a funny and smart thriller that feels very Hitchcock inspired.It´s entertaining but has no depth.The acting by Fanny Ardant is very funny and great.Also very beautifully shot in black & white and I think that François Truffaut was one of the best directors and he did some fantastic films.4/5

Confidentially Yours aka Vivement Dimanche is a spoof/tribute to noir/detective/Hitchcock films. Someone (it won't take you long to figure out who) commits a brutal murder and the police suspect Jean Louis Trintignant ( a real estate agent) but his secretary (a girl Friday he has just fired, perfectly played by Fanny Ardant--whose movie this is) investigates (dressed in a trench coat -- why she must wear a trench coat is one of the gags), determined to clear him.

It is a shaggy dog because it piles on the clues, close scrapes, crimes, etc. at ten times the rate of the films it salutes. It is a greyhound because it must get all that into 110 minutes, which it does with zest and comic theatricality (referenced of course by the subplot of a comic theatrical performance being given by Ardant's amateur theater group).

As film making it would have been a lot fresher if it had been made in 1964 rather than 1984, but that should not effect your viewing experience of an expertly made madcap mystery. I would have preferred the film in color. I know why it is in black and white, but it does not seem to me to have any particular aesthetic merit as a black and white film. While no masterpiece, it was perhaps not a bad way to end a directorial career with a loving look back to all those great mysteries and screwball comedies of yore.

Confidentially is truly one of the very best fun mysteries. Frankly,I don't quite understand how some do not seem to understand that this is just a wonderful way to pass a couple of hours. It certainly is not necessary to analyze each and every minute of the picture. I suppose that most of us have a few films, which we always remember and continually go back to contemplate. This is Confidentially. I have it on a quite old VHS and probably watch it at least once every few months. There are so many wonderful aspects. So very different from the run of the mill. I can watch over and over again the opening scene walking with the dog or the closing playing with the lens cap. What incredible music. Interesting, in another Truffaut film, the leg walking scene is vividly portrayed. Ardant is one of those very special French artists that never seem to change or for that matter, age. Twenty years after this film, she starred in Nathalie and Callas. She still is extremely beautiful. I sure would like to figure out just what is the French secret. Danielle Darrieux is still making pictures at 93. It has been more than 50 years since Jean Louis Trintignant became famous after his Brigitte Bardot film. BTW - there are so very many ever so interesting small pieces in Confidentially. One I really like is the one about the girl who comes to the office for a secretarial job interview. This picture is now 27 years old. Will we have to wait another 27 years for another perfectly coordinated and exquisitely designed film to appear?

When hearing of Truffaut's death from a brain tumour Godard is suppose to have remarked 'That's what comes of reading so many bad books'! A pretty harsh judgement even by Godard's standards but one senses what he meant. During a career in which he made 28 films Truffaut certainly cast his net pretty wide for material. This final film is taken from 'The Long Saturday Night' by Charles Williams, a writer unfamiliar to me. As is well documented Truffaut acknowledged two masters, Renoir and Hitchcock.This is an unashamed tribute to the latter and is the second collaboration with his final 'muse', the splendid Fanny Ardant, having made 'The Woman Next Door' the previous year. It also surprisingly represents his first collaboration with the marvellous Jean-Loius Trintignant who had apparently written to Truffaut asking why he never used him. The film is graced once more with a fabulous score by Georges Delerue and the monochromatic cinematography of Nestor Almendros is intended to replicate Hollywood 'noir'. Technically excellent, there is never a wasted shot in a Truffaut film, this is both intriguing and entertaining. My enjoyment of this film is tinged with sadness however and not just because it is Truffaut's swansong. I am not the first and shall certainly not be the last to observe that with this delightful but rather slight film he has gone out not with a bang but with a whimper.

Truffaut did some beautiful movies and this, along with La femme d'à coté, is a favorite. The B&W gives the film ambiance, Fanny Ardent gives the film grace. She's the heart and soul of the film and is in very good company. The plot is smart and full of twists - will keep you hooked to the end. What initially appears to be another passion crime unfolds into the secret relationships of the deceased, into the underworld, and into the many abilities of a secretary that happens to be in love with the boss. The movie is very instigating in showing a feminist approach to crime solving, where, surprisingly, the heroin is ready to stand rather strong abuse. Well worth bearing the legends if you can't handle French.

Julien (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is arrested for the murder of a man known to him, shot whilst they are both out duck shooting. His wife is also found killed and it transpires that she was the first victim's lover. Released from custody, Julien hides out whilst Barbara (Fanny Ardant), the secretary he has just fired, investigates the crime to try and prove his innocence,

Trauffaut's final film as director is actually more Hitchcock than Hitchcock, the director Trauffaut was an expert on and so revered. It's a light, fluffy comedic thriller with Ardant in fabulous form moving from one improbable clue to another sometimes having to dress up to get more evidence whilst having a topsy turvy relationship with Trintignant. Not vintage Trauffaut but it's a good Hitchcock homage and great fun.

World cinema lost a great craftsman when François Truffaut passed away from a brain tumour in 1984, but his legacy lives on of course and here in Vivement dimanche! we have a very fitting and enjoyable swansong. Basically a crime/romance film, Truffaut treats us to a sort of pulp noir for the 80s audience, and by golly it works a treat. The plot is scrambled as Barbara Becker goes in search of clues to prove that her boss {ex} is innocent of a murder when all the evidence points to him actually being the killer. It sounds simple but there is much more going on as Truffaut has woven into the mix the complexities of love, there is more to Barbara and her boss Julien than is at first thought, and the journey that Barbara takes is dark and interesting in equal measure.

The cast are simply sublime, I adored every actor in this film because they all give memorable performances to a number of interesting and integral characters. The leads are pitch perfect, Fanny Ardant as Barbara is just wonderful, putting layers into the role the further into the seedy underworld she goes, whilst Jean-Louis Trintignant feeds off Ardant's lead and gives a gusto and perfectly wrought turn to savour, shot in classic black & white to add to the flavour of the genre, the film is a sure fire winner, and the ending is tops as well, 9/10.

i was up late, scamming for some reason to continue my slackful ways... i chanced upon this little gem, halfway through... i knew nothing about this work except it being from overseas...

i was hooked; entranced; captivated by the style, dialogue, pacing and FANNY... what a spark of life she was... beautiful and damaged...

well, i am stunned that this film is from 1983??? surely it's a mistake- 1963 perhaps? and i don't mean the fact it's B&W- this production style is long since passed... isn't it??

stunned also by these user reviews... they are professional-grade, i swear... as good as the movie, i think... something tells me i must watch much more truffaut... and FANNY...

People might think i am mad to give 8. But somehow i liked the way the picture has been presented. Complexity in the relationship i think it has been subtly but strongly depicted. another good point is this movie took the suspense tempo so well till the end of (or nearer to the end)the movie. Forget about certain illogical sequences, how this could happen or what, but the most appreciable thing was the suspense was never broken till the last few scenes, the tempo was kept without losing it, romance bit was there to show how people are so blind sometimes, they miss the real love and run after beauty. Hey i liked it. Its good movie to make your mood lighter.

A little similar to The Last Metro (1980), but in the tone of Shoot the Piano Player (1960), and this time François Truffaut found the correct tone and the appropriate genre to tell this great story.

The ending is slightly underwhelming, but it is about my only complaint, Vivement dimanche! is a well-crafted and well-acted movie, there is nothing else to say about it.

You should see it if you have the opportunity, independently, it is an important movie. But it is also the last film of Truffaut, and it is a reason more to see it right now!

In the 70s and 80s many directors were striving to obtain the title of "biggest Alfred Hitchcock fan-boy/copycat", but the podium surely existed of Brian DePalma, Richard Franklin and François Truffaut. The latter is undeniably a multi-talented film maker all by himself ("Fahrenheit 451" and "The Bride Wore Black" speak for themselves), but this attempt to bring the ultimate homage to the one and only Master of Suspense is a big disappointment. The script is based on an American novel, but set in Southern France and centering on Hitchcock's personal favorite subject; - namely a fugitive man wrongfully accused of murder and trying to clear his name (even though here all the dirty work is done by his secretary) while the corpses keep piling up.

Truffaut puts a lot of tributes in his final project, like also to the film-noir cinema of the 40s. The black & white cinematography is stunning, but the treatment of the women in this film is downright infuriating. Trintignant's character, not exactly a handsome Casanova, is constantly rude to his secretary and slaps her in the face, but she only becomes more and more faithful to him. That sort of disgusting discrimination isn't tolerable in the 1980s. The identity of the killer is far too easy to guess, and even more stupid is the fact that the prime suspect is supposedly unfindable by the police, but simple hides in the backroom of his office the entire time.

It's an exercise of style, and not in the best way. I quite liked how it starts, the magic of black and white, the feeling of an old noir film. But the plot is a giant hole, neither thrilling nor funny while it tries to be both, and the chemistry between the lead characters is just not there. Soon all the magic fades and you realize that you don't really care for the fate of those on screen, who did it, who loves whom, whatever. In a few scenes I appreciated the touch of the old master, Truffaut, but in the whole the movie felt artificial and uninteresting.

The subversion here is that this is one of the Hitchcock "Wrong Man" type of movies, where a character (in his films it was always a man since, I suppose, that was his only real frame of reference when it came to these complicated thrillers as far as who the audience could see themselves in), but the one who is really figuring everything out and doing all of the hard work is Fanny Ardant's character. One might want to feel bad that Trintagnant is in this position of needing to prove his innocence, but for much of the film he seems to be in his own office hiding away while Ardant goes off to Nice, pretends to be a street-walker, follows suspicious characters and does all the work that one usually sees someone with authority do.

Of course Ardant's Barbara isn't some professional at this and gets thrown into the thick of this mystery as much as Julien. But it's just the clever twist Truffaut (and writer and longtime collaborator Suzanne Schiffman) found adapting this book: we actually can have strong and quick-minded women who can solve a case bit by bit - in this case, as we see, a little acting training helps the learning curve - and I was impressed by just how much Truffaut puts on Ardant's shoulders to carry.

When I got the DVD, I thought it would be the typical thing of it being Tritignant's movie with his lady friend by his side (again, think back to 39 Steps and North by Northwest for that template). So while Truffaut and Almendros get rich black and white photography of this story, setting it in a mood moreso than a specific time (some of Barbara's clothes cant be mistaken for being from after 1980), the film has a solid progressive undercurrent to it all. She has total agency, and Ardant is charming, assertive, and compelling in her performance (Tritignant is good too, though after a while I found his demeanor kind of one note - she carries much more of the charm between him, though he does try).

Is some of this a little light or too reliant on those "a-ha# those two names match, snap fingers!" beats? Absolutely. That's part of the fun though, and if you key into it then theres not too much one needs to intellectualize about what goes on (unless one wants to read even deeper into the gender politics of it all, how women have to but also chose to act in a number of ways when its this male dominated sorta-scuzzy French crime world of the movies). What cant help but be brought up, as so many have done, is that this was Truffaut's final movie. It never has that feel of being some total, all-encompassing statement to me about Truffaut and his beloved Hitch. One can certainly try to read it that way, but I doubt he knew what was to come that would take him from the world so tragically young (he was 51, 52 I think, he was 50 when this came out).

While I wouldn't rank what is Confidentially Yours as a light (though not necessarily overly comic) twisty dramatic-thriller as one of his finest, to his credit he didn't go out slumming it either; if anything, its style helps make it so that if one wanted to go from, say, Shoot the Piano Player right into this, the quality wouldn't be a terrible drop off.

As I have often pointed out in several reviews, François Truffaut is far from being prominent in my canon of favorite French filmmakers of all time. I have always thought that he was one of the most overrated ones and he contributed in making me hate the New Wave and its pretensions. "Les 400 coups" (1959) is a very academic work. "Jules et Jim" (1962) has not worn very well and its innovative camera work couldn't conceal the extreme unlikeliness of the story. I also pass in silence the Antoine Doinel saga starring stiff Jean-Pierre Léaud. However, there are some palatable flicks in Truffaut's filmography: "l'Enfant Sauvage" (1970), a very harrowing, sensitive work, "l'Argent De Poche" (1976), a delightful children's realm and this one "Vivement Dimanche!" (1983), his last opus before he passed away the following year.

It was not the first time, Truffaut had tried a stab at handling the detective genre. "Tirez Sur Le Pianiste" (1960), "la Mariée Etait en noir "(1968), "la Sirène Du Mississippi" (1969) gave so-so results but "Vivement Dimanche"!" is far more gripping and enjoyable than the three quoted films. An estate agent, Julien Vercel (Jean Louis Trintignant) is suspected of having murdered his wife and his lover. He has to hide in his workplace and her secretary Barbara (Fanny Ardant) investigates about this mystery and leads her to reconstitute Barbara's murky past. Julien confides to Barbara that he knew very well his wife but in the same time, he didn't want to know her hidden face. He'll however discover it.

With his 21st long-feature movie, Truffaut wanted to pay a tribute to one of his masters, Sir Alfred Hitchcock and also to the detective films with which he grew up. The Truffaut insiders surely know that he was a big fan of the master of suspense, in the 1960's, Truffaut published a book in which through a series of interviews, he related the work he did in his prestigious filmography. In our present movie, Hitchockian references are evident with, for example winks at "Rear Window" (1954) (Truffaut's favorite film from Hitchcock) or "Dial M For Murder" (1954). And some objects play a vital role for the evolution of the plot like in some Hitchcock's works: the telephone among others.

Truffaut's movie conciliates two sub genres of the detective film: the whodunit and the film noir (the film takes place in the south of France where it is usually sunny, but here quite a lot of scenes takes place at night) enjoys a solidly structured plot with the usual ingredients of the genre: wrong culprit, shady places, a gripping investigation with the scattering of clues revealing Barbara's past and leading to the resolution of the plot. Actually, one could have an inkling about Barbara's and her lover's murderer. What matters is why he killed them. Then Truffaut's work is also served with genteel camera work and especially there's humor which isn't in general his forte. But here, it works. My favorite moment would be (when Barbara is in front of the brothel: a passer-by: "Excuse me. How Much?" Barbara: "Pardon?" "How much?", "it's twenty-five to eight". And of course, Truffaut couldn't make a work without inserting movie-loving details. The cinema plays the Stanley Kubrick film: "Paths of Glory" (1958).

The cast? It's immaculate. Fanny Ardant (Mrs Truffaut at the time) is excellent as well as Jean Louis Trintignant. But the rest of the cast doesn't stay on the bench. Each actor who acts a colorful character makes his or her part count.

What is puzzling is that Truffaut hated Sundays. It's mysterious why he entitled his last movie with something he disliked. Was he contemplating retirement? Perhaps not since after, he wrote the script for "la Petite Voleuse" which was about to be directed by Claude Miller in 1988 with gratifying results. But Fanny Ardant sighs in the film: "I can't wait to be on Sunday". It's true that in the film, it's a complete change of life. She acts more like a detective than a secretary and it may be grueling to try to resolve a mystery. So, Sunday is eagerly awaited. Anyway, Truffaut began his cinema career with an overrated work, "les 400 coups". He will have ended it with a buoyant one.

We open on a dusk-filled marsh-like field of France. A man is crouched down in position for duck/bird hunting, when from behind him a man approaches and shoots him. Such begins Francois Truffaut's "Confidentially Yours." Fanny Ardant is a secretary who has for some time been in love with her employer. When he is under suspicion by the police for the killing, she sets out to help him. Through a series of Hitchcockian developments and scenarios, they are thrust together. More murders occur, even as he is trying to keep an arm's length away from the police. I thought I had more to say, but this was a very enjoyable film that got more complicated as it went along. At times, it felt very tongue-in-cheek and in others the imminent danger was intense. But make sure you see this (on TV or DVD) with subtitles you can read. The top of the second line was at the bottom of the screen, barely making it readable. Otherwise, a very well-made film with good lead actors and a haunting mysteriousness about it make this a very rewarding experience.