Bed and Board (1970) review

Delicious low-key comedy from Truffaut that keeps the proper light tone throughout unlike a good deal of similar movies that change their mood to attain 'depth' through darker happenings (death, divorce, etc). Antoine Doinel marries his 'longtime' love, a placid violin teacher, and putters around in various jobs, like flower painter (?) and remote-controlled toy boat operator (??). It shows his growing discomfort with marriage and parenthood - he's a child-like romantic in the best sort-of way - and you suspect he'd like to dump the wife and keep the kid (part four of the series has him doing the former). Truffaut was such a gifted filmmaker - and Jean-Pierre Léaud such an earnest performer - that when Doinel has an affair with a Japanese woman, he keeps the audience going along with him where another director would have alienated the viewers and turned the movie into something sour and disagreeable.