Bed and Board

Bed and Board (Domicile conjugal, 1970) is a French comedy-drama by François Truffaut you can watch online on iFILM. It's the fourth chapter in the Antoine Doinel cycle, following The 400 Blows (1959), Antoine and Colette (1962), and Stolen Kisses (1968), with Jean-Pierre Léaud returning once more as the grown-up Antoine.

Married now to Christine, Antoine spends his days dyeing flowers in a Parisian courtyard, half-heartedly working on a novel, and telling himself this domesticity suits him. Then he meets Kyoko, a young Japanese woman, and the comfortable routine starts to unravel. Truffaut shoots the whole thing with the same light-handed, affectionate irony that makes the cycle work — no melodrama, no easy lessons, just a very recognizable portrait of a man who can't quite decide what he wants from adulthood. Truffaut himself appears briefly on screen, as he often did.

The film belongs to a rare breed of cinema that finds marriage both genuinely funny and quietly sad at once. Stream Bed and Board (1970) online on iFILM.