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.

Leave it to the French to find an American pulp fiction novel like Charles Williams' "The Long Saturday Night" and turn it to cinematic terms. Such was the choice of Francois Truffaut, one of the champions of the New Wave movement, and a fervent admirer of director Alfred Hitchcock, to translate the story into a French one, paying homage to his idol as he only knew how. The result was a film a step below of his great movies.

The story is about Jean Vercel, a real estate agent, who is a suspect for killing both his wife, Marie-Christine, and her lover. Vatel goes to hide in his office and engages his secretary, Barbara, who is secretly in love with her boss to do the investigating as he wants to clear his name. It is clear that Barbara has a knack for getting to the bottom of the problem to help the man she loves.

Truffaut shot the film in black and white. He worked on the screenplay with two writers he had worked before, Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel. The result is a movie that was more a product of the way he felt about Hitchcock, and in many respects, also an homage to Stanley Kubrick, whom he also admired, than a deeply felt film. To prove how he felt about Kubrick, he has Barbara at one point ask a cinema ticket seller whether "Paths of Glory" is a love story. Mr. Truffaut must have been sick while involved in the project because he died shortly after it was finished.

Fanny Ardant is the best excuse for watching the movie. She plays Barbara, the secretary that wants to exonerate her boss and acts as a detective. Jean Louis Trintignant is the accused man, Jean Vercel, in a role that didn't do much for him. This film was also a tribute to Ms. Ardant and the way the director felt about her.

Seeing an excellent double bill of The Story of Adele H and Pocket Money (1975 and 1972-both also reviewed),I took a look at François Truffaut other credits. Finding that fellow auteur Robert Bresson had made his last movie (the very good L'Argent-also reviewed) in 1983,I was sad to find that Truffaut had also made his last production in the same year,which led to me paying my respects to both film makers.

View on the film:

Making his last ever image being children playing around/kicking a camera lens, (which could be seen as a metaphor of the New Wavers kicking cinema in whichever direction they wanted) film maker François Truffaut is joined by long-time co-writers Suzanne Schiffman & Jean Aurel,and cinematographer Néstor Almendros for a slick final return to Film Noir.

Displaying his love of Hitchcock, Truffaut and Aurel conclude their experimentation of tracking shots with elegant pans along Vercel's safe-house,and walls glazed in sharp black and white shadows building anticipation to brief glimpses of the killer.

Going for a much lighter mood than his past Film Noir's, Truffaut cross-stitches Noir with a "Caper" lightness, reeling in visits to the cinema, a cheeky elf outfit for Becker and Georges Delerue's score giving a jaunty swagger to Becker and Vercel.

Spreading photos of the crimes Vercel is accused of across the screen, the writers do extremely well in their adaptation of Charles "Dead Calm" Williams book never feeling heavy,with the dialogue having the sparkling quality of the Caper genre,which allows for the couples run to solve the case to have a cheeky playful mood.

Joining her husband for the second,and final time,Fanny Ardant gives an excellent performance as Becker,with Ardant injecting a wry sense of humour in Becker's exchanges with Jean-Louis Trintignant's stressed-out Vercel, and showing a real relish in wearing Truffaut's last Femme Fatale jacket.