Truffaut’s terrific last film is as Hitchcockian as it gets, with a top performance by Fanny Ardant who plays a sleuthing secretary after her boss becomes the prime suspect in a series of murders. 

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Francois Truffaut was famously a fanboy of Alfred Hitchcock and even wrote a book about his conversations with him, published in 1966.  Confidentially Yours, which would be Truffaut’s final film, is as Hitchcockian as it gets, a terrific work of suspense and mystery. 

Some may deride it as a genre film but such is the artistry on show and the self-awareness of cinematic form and genre conventions, including classical noir, that it is impossible to look away. 

It tells a compelling story of a secretary who must snoop around for clues after her boss becomes the prime suspect in a series of murders. 

Fanny Ardant gives a top performance as the sleuthing brunette (a subversion of the Hitchcock blonde) who uncovers something sinister and shocking.  Jean-Louis Trintignant is the angsty boss who is forced to hide in his office as the police and his longtime lawyer try to look for him. 

“If I report this to the police, you will be in trouble.”

While the tension is palpable, the film is also cheeky in playing with audience expectations, such as a scene involving police questioning and a phone call. There are also moments that Truffaut makes explicit as a sleight-of-hand on his part, for instance, a loose handle that falls to the floor as a character closes a door to hide. 

It may not be much, but some of these little details gleefully convey the inner workings of the genre.  The trick for Truffaut is that it feels at once meticulously planned yet spontaneous enough to suggest its naturalness in an otherwise environment of staged artifice. 

In a few scenes, Ardant’s character is seen rehearsing for a stage play but in the context of Confidentially Yours, her dreams of performing become subservient to her performative leading role, where she would ‘live the dream’ by pulling the strings of the plot. 

No longer is she subservient to her boss or anyone else in her newfound reality.  She is confidentially ours, an anti-femme fatale who would take us not into darkness but the spotlight.

Grade: A-

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