Mrs. dinosaur (Delphine)

In Stolen Kisses (1968), which doesn’t even read like a real movie but a caricature of one, or perhaps that is only because the present I am rewatching it in is one of constant caricature, Delphine Seyrig’s character is so plastic and feather-light, like an Estée Lauder perfume whose presence is heavy in concept, but in practice, filmy, odorless—sans charge. Delphine has her usual sparkle playing a slender, well-kept petite-bourgeois, a superior woman, the wife of a shoe store boss. Only she can save a movie in which Doinel somehow loses all his sex appeal, he is at that earnest age (20) when sensuality is often comically struck out of men, despite their pursuit of it; he is graceless, naive, floppy—even Leaud’s considerable charm, the foundation of his narrative, is waning. It wears his viewers down, whereas Delphine is able to breathe something back in.