The Soft Skin

The Soft Skin (La Peau douce, 1964) is François Truffaut's drama you can watch online on iFILM. Pierre Lachenay has everything Paris considers respectable — a publishing career, a devoted wife, a daughter. Then a flight to Lisbon and a stewardess named Nicole pull at something he cannot name.

What follows is less a love story than a study in cowardice. Truffaut strips the affair of glamour: what you get is clumsy hotel arrangements, half-truths on the telephone, a man perpetually a step behind his own decisions. Jean Desailly plays Pierre as someone adrift inside a life that suddenly fits him badly, and Françoise Dorléac brings Nicole a cool self-possession that makes his infatuation entirely believable.

Released in 1964 and initially dismissed by critics who wanted more of the Nouvelle Vague playfulness, the film has aged into something sharper than its reputation suggested. The ending, when it comes, is shocking precisely because Truffaut earned it honestly. Stream The Soft Skin online on iFILM.