François Truffaut
L'uomo che Amava le Donne

Hidden behind a black veil, some, others in lighter colors with a bare face. In tears, with faces contorted to stifle a laugh, young, less young, cultured, less educated, beautiful, very beautiful, less beautiful, homely. The small but significant crowd bids farewell for the last time to Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner), a serial womanizer, a professional and pathological seducer, but still a gentleman in the end.

Incapable of a serious relationship, naturally unmotivated, he lived his entire life "without anyone ever seeing him with male company after 6:30 PM". In the Montpellier of the late '70s, this expert fluid mechanics engineer lives his life following a total passion for the opposite sex; there is no challenge of conquest but a necessary need for a fleeting connection with women, a brief relationship, a necessary synapse. Bertrand loves them deeply, he loves them so much that one alone is not enough. He loves their legs, "Women's legs are compasses that measure the globe in all directions, giving it its balance and harmony", he loves their intelligence, independence, decisive character or fragility. He has a refined and personal sense of taste, "Do you remember when, several years ago, miniskirts came out? Men went wild. But I was rather worried because I thought: well, at this point they can't shorten anymore, and they'll have to lengthen", Bertrand is Truffaut. The French director definitively captures his all-consuming passion for women on film, a passion that characterizes all his films. The woman of Truffaut is not the intellectual philosopher and manipulator of Rohmer, she is a complete and earthly woman with all her defects and virtues. She is a living woman, made of spirit and flesh that must be loved, she is the woman who knows how to carry an important nose, conduct a game. It's an autobiographical, confessional, very personal film, a film about the obsession that marks life just as "The Green Room" will be some time later.

Will Bertrand have lived a happy life in the end? No one can know; his autobiographical text, where recounting all his conquests he ends up realizing he has spent only a few lines on the only woman he truly loved, bears witness. Perhaps the heart of a man is not so easily interpretable after all.