François Truffaut's Vivement Dimanche ! | Finally Sunday (1983)

This film is based on Charles William's novel The Long Saturday Night (1962), also known as Confidentially Yours. So three years after Le Dernier Métro (1980) we have le dernier Truffaut, in black and white and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant as estate agent Julien, with his improbable secretary Fanny Ardant as Barbara, the young woman who loves him unbeknown to him, but whose sleuthing skills will in the end get him exculpated from the murders of his wife and her lover. But not without more murders, more trauma, anonymous telephone threats, Barbara posing as a prostitute warding off the johns, etc.

This convoluted thriller is a tribute to American film noir, particularly Hitchcock, John Huston and Howard Hawks, to some extent a satire of the genre, and not without its absurdities, perhaps notably when we have the guilty party smoking two cigarettes without realising, and Barbara pretending by telephone to be the wife of commissaire Santelli (Philippe Morier-Genoud). Not Truffaut's best by a long shot, but worth it for the antics of the brilliant Fanny Ardent.

Hey, I didn't even say a word about the crap title translation!