Painless Memoirs

By JAY COCKS

As the alter ego of Director Franc,ois Truffaut, the character called Antoine Doinel made his first appearance eleven years ago in The 400 Blows as a lonely, desperate adolescent. Then came Love at Twenty and Stolen Kisses, in which the youth edged toward maturity. Now Antoine--who has been portrayed throughout by the remarkable Jean-Pierre Leaud--and Christine, played by Claude Jade, are ready for conjugal love. Truffaut begins the funny, futile years of their marriage (and ends the autobiographical series) with Bed and Board.

Each installment has seemed more amusing and airy but at the same time less real and telling than its predecessor. Desperation gave way to melancholy, which in turn yielded to benign human comedy. The wit, charm and felicity characteristic of Truffaut are abundant in Bed and Board. But now the ingredients are a little too predictable, and perhaps a little forced as well. There is much fun, but a scarcity of energy and insight.

Manic Pixilation. In the early stages of Bed and Board, the marriage is deftly presented as an even mixture of affection, innocence and Gallic eccentricity. Antoine and Christine play games at bedtime; Antoine manages to land then lose a succession of unlikely jobs; Christine bears their first child. But Doinel, the eternal mooncalf, is lured away by a Japanese girl. He moves in with the Oriental, who speaks no French and proceeds by slow inches to drive her new lover crazy with boredom. Antoine then woos Christine anew, discussing his general dissatisfaction and lassitude. Long-suffering but still loving, she thinks it over and finally takes him back. The last scene of the film finds them settling in for the wedded duration.

Truffaut treats this material neither as light comedy in the Lubitsch manner nor as domestic drama, but attempts to create a kind of compromise fantasyland somewhere in between. That he succeeds is a mixed blessing. In their own comic innocence, Truffaut's people owe much to the creations of William Saroyan, an author to whom Truffaut paid homage in Shoot the Piano Player. But in Saroyan there is still much pain. In Truffaut it is increasingly concealed behind a general air of slightly manic pixilation.

Christine reacts to Antoine's offhand marital defection with pert and maddening insouciance. Antoine himself makes the move to his Oriental lady friend with only slightly more care than he would take in selecting a record. It is as if in rendering his memoirs on film, Truffaut has made them progressively more accessible and less intimate, sparing both his audience and himself the challenge and occasional pain of real recall.

Jay Cocks

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