L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977)
Directed by François Truffaut

Film Review

Witty, incisive and masterfully narrated, L'Homme qui aimait les femmes is one of François Truffaut's most entertaining films, but it is also one his most introspective and melancholic.  As in many of Truffaut's works, it deals with the subject of a compulsive need for love, a need which can never really be satisfied.  The film goes much further than its author had previously dared  and portrays this need as a pathetic, tragically destructive obsessive urge which appears to serve no useful function.   The wry comedy and playful innocence of Truffaut's earlier romantic comedies (such as Baisers volés) is less apparent, and has given way to a mood of tired pessimism and existentialist morbidity.  Whilst L'Homme qui aimait les femmes is great fun to watch it is also profoundly moving, and that is what most sets it apart from Truffaut's other comic films.

In common with most of Truffaut's films, L'Homme qui aimait les femmes has a strong autobiographical element, and indeed it is perhaps the film which most accurately reflects his own life.   Truffaut's obsessive love for cinema was matched only by his love of women, something which the public were made aware of thanks to his high-profile liaisons with such stars as Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Fanny Ardant.   After the failure of his marriage in the mid-1960s, Truffaut would never again enjoy a long-term relationship with another woman, and this was something which could account for the darkening mood of his later films, as well as providing the inspiration for this film.

In L'Homme qui aimait les femmes, Truffaut makes no secret of the fact that he is telling his own story.  He acknowledges as much with his momentary (ghost-like) appearance at the start of the film and by casting an actor (Charles Denner) who resembles him greatly in physique and personality.  There can be little doubt that "the man who loved women" is none other than François Truffaut himself.  It is his ability and willingness to draw on his own experiences which makes this such an effective and moving film.

When it was released in 1977, L'Homme qui aimait les femmes was an obvious target for the feminist movement, but those who condemned the film for its perceived chauvinist slant were rather missing the point.  The central character, Bertrand Morane, is not a shallow Don Juan who hops from one bed to another without a moment's remorse.  He is a complex, traumatised soul who epitomises the very essence of the heterosexual male.  The way women are portrayed in the film may be unflattering towards the fair sex but it is how he perceives them, as objects of desire which he must possess, at whatever cost.  Far from being stereotypical, the film is surprisingly fresh and honest in its depiction of human sexuality, albeit harrowingly pessimistic in its conclusion.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about L'Homme qui aimait is that although its subject is depressing the film is not.  Truffaut's characteristic tongue-in-cheek comedy is in evidence throughout, providing an effective counterbalance to the film's darker moments. Whilst we are moved by the poignancy of his hero's plight, we can see the funny side, and this makes it a strangely uplifting film, as well as film with great humanity and poetry.  In one of the best performances of his career, Charles Denner succeeds in making his character sympathetic and believable.  What we see is not an egoistical womaniser but a victim who, like Truffaut himself, is consumed by a passion he can neither rationalise nor control.

Despite its unconventional style and some mixed reviews, L'Homme qui aimait les femmes proved to be a great commercial success when it was first released in France and the United States.   The film was remade in 1983 by Blake Edwards with Burt Reynolds in the lead role.  As is often the case with American remakes, it woefully missed the point of the original film and ended up lacking both its charm and its depth.

Film Synopsis

Before his abrupt, tragic and somewhat farcical death in his mid-forties, Bernard Morane was the most inveterate of skirt chasers.  It's fair to say he was addicted to women - scarcely a woman could walk past him without instantly arousing his interest and his libido.  An engineer by profession, Bernard was committed to his work, but once he left the laboratory where he spent his days, he was entirely at the mercy of his primitive desires.  No female was safe.  Bernard was utterly insatiable.

Single women, married women, widows - they all held a fascination for the man who loved women to a degree bordering on obsession.  And this is what brought about poor Bernard's downfall, although he went the way he would have wanted - chasing the one object of his compulsive desire.  Now he lies in a small wooden box in a provincial cemetery, surrounded by all the women he loved, however fleetingly.  Bernard had no friends, no family, only lovers, and it is the latter who are left to mourn his passing.  One of his former conquests is Geneviève Bigey, who takes charge of the publishing of his scarcely credible memoirs...