{ "id": "ep5jcdkq2c", "slug": "vivement-dimanche", "title": "Vivement dimanche!", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s", "label": "Comedies of the 1980s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s.satirical-black-and-parody-comedies-of-t", "label": "Satirical, black, and parody comedies of the 1980s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s.satirical-black-and-parody-comedies-of-t" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s", "label": "Western Europe · 1946 to 2000: Comedies of the 1980s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946", "label": "Western Europe · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance", "label": "Comedy and romantic films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s", "label": "Comedies of the 1980s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Vivement dimanche! (Confidentially Yours), 1983 French black-and-white police comedy, François Truffaut's last film, adapted from Charles Williams' The Long Saturday Night, starring Fanny Ardant and Jean-Louis Trintignant, released 10 August 1983.", "snippet": "Vivement dimanche! (Confidentially Yours), 1983 French black-and-white police comedy, François Truffaut's last film, adapted from Charles Williams' The Long Saturday Night, starring Fanny Ardant and Jean-Louis Trintignant, released 10 August 1983.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.comedy-romance.comedies-of-the-1980s.satirical-black-and-parody-comedies-of-t", "markdown": "# Vivement dimanche!\n\n**Vivement dimanche!** (released in English as *Confidentially Yours*) is a 1983 French black-and-white police comedy directed by [François Truffaut](https://www.edgepedia.org/francois-truffaut), adapted from the 1962 crime novel *The Long Saturday Night* by the American writer Charles Williams. It stars [Fanny Ardant](https://www.edgepedia.org/fanny-ardant) as Barbara Becker and [Jean-Louis Trintignant](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-louis-trintignant) as Julien Vercel, and it was the last feature film Truffaut completed before his death in 1984.[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [2](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/) • [3](https://repertoire.cinema.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/film/vivement-dimanche-22527/)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director | François Truffaut (1932–1984); his 21st and final feature film[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [4](https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/sequences/1983-n114-sequences1150940/50942ac.pdf) |\n| Source | Adapted from Charles Williams' novel *The Long Saturday Night* (1962)[2](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/) |\n| Lead roles | Fanny Ardant (Barbara Becker), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Julien Vercel)[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) |\n| Release | France, 10 August 1983; presented in opening of the Locarno Festival on 5 August 1983[5](https://cineuropa.org/fr/film/401350/) • [6](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1983/08/06/cinema-truffaut-le-malicieux_3076411_1819218.html) |\n| Form | Black-and-white comedy thriller, French language, roughly 110–112 minutes[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [7](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/55509) |\n| Key crew | Cinematography Néstor Almendros, music Georges Delerue, editing Martine Barraqué, sets Hilton McConnico[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) |\n| Production | Les Films du Carrosse, Films A2, and Soprofilms; distributed by MK2 Films[8](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/casting/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nJulien Vercel, who runs a real-estate agency, is suspected of murder when Claude Massoulier is assassinated during a hunting party; Vercel's wife Marie-Christine was the victim's mistress. When Marie-Christine is killed in turn, Vercel pretends to leave the country and hides in his own agency, while his secretary Barbara Becker, secretly in love with her boss, conducts the investigation in his place and works to clear him with the police.[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [10](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm%3D94806.html)\n\nBarbara's inquiry brings her a gallery of secondary characters: a shaken cinema cashier, a persistent client who wants to rent \"a castle in the mountains with his feet in the water,\" a zealous lawyer, a too-curious press photographer who is also her ex-husband, a Slavic pleasure-seeker, a blonde typist who may be a rival, and above all a tenacious police commissioner, Santelli.[5](https://cineuropa.org/fr/film/401350/) The supporting cast includes Jean-Pierre Kalfon as Massoulier, a priest in the film's version of the character, Philippe Laudenbach as the lawyer Maître Clément, Caroline Sihol as Marie-Christine, Philippe Morier-Genoud as Santelli, and Jean-Louis Richard as Louison.[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [8](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/casting/)\n\n## Production and adaptation\n\nTruffaut wrote the screenplay with Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel, working from Williams' novel, and the film marked his second collaboration with Fanny Ardant after *La Femme d'à côté* (1981). Before the release, Truffaut described the role as ideal for Ardant, a part where she could be \"launched at a gallop into a universe that trots.\"[2](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/) The adaptation continued a line in his career of transposing American crime fiction into a French setting, following *Tirez sur le pianiste* (1960), based on David Goodis, and *La Mariée était en noir* (1968), based on William Irish.[9](https://adrc-asso.org/patrimoine/diffusion/films-et-cycles/vivement-dimanche)\n\nThe film was produced by Les Films du Carrosse, Films A2, and Soprofilms, with Armand Barbault as producer, and it received its French exhibition visa (number 55509) on 20 June 1983, classified for all audiences.[8](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/casting/) • [7](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/55509) It opened the Locarno Festival on 5 August 1983 and reached French cinemas on 10 August.[6](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1983/08/06/cinema-truffaut-le-malicieux_3076411_1819218.html) • [5](https://cineuropa.org/fr/film/401350/)\n\n## Style and reversal of the film noir\n\nThe film is shot in black and white by Néstor Almendros, with a score by [Georges Delerue](https://www.edgepedia.org/georges-delerue), and it works as an homage to [Alfred Hitchcock](https://www.edgepedia.org/alfred-hitchcock) and to the light-toned American crime comedy of the 1950s, in the manner of Hitchcock's British entertainments such as *Saboteur* and *The Lady Vanishes*.[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [2](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/) Truffaut instructed Delerue to write the music as \"a woman conquering the city,\" and he told his actors to imagine a dubbed American film in which there is not enough time and space for all the words, a film obsessed with speed.[11](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2004/10/19/les-secrets-de-fabrication-les-rages-et-les-indiscretions-de-francois-truffaut_383603_1819218.html)\n\n**The central reversal** places a woman in the detective's role. The Larousse film dictionary notes that, against the tradition of the film noir, it is here a woman who holds the principal role while the men are constantly led astray, and that Ardant moves from tragic parts into fantasy and humor.[1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) A scholarly study of French crime cinema describes the investigating-woman figure as rare in the French police genre, and links it to Truffaut's nostalgia for American-style detective comedies.[12](https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cine/2012-v22-n2-3-cine0199/1011654ar.pdf) Truffaut himself called it a \"Saturday-night film,\" and it is often treated as a minor work in his filmography, though critics have also read it as one of his most personal films, a pastiche full of quotations.[13](https://lettres.dis.ac-guyane.fr/IMG/pdf/letteresmodernes2df_262921.pdf) • [14](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/critiques/presse/)\n\n## Reception and afterlife\n\nContemporary French critics were mixed to favorable. Jacques Siclier in *Le Monde* framed the film through Truffaut's long-held conviction that cinema is the art of the actress; Gilbert Salachas in *Télérama* wrote that the film-pastiche, stuffed with quotations, is in reality one of Truffaut's most personal works; François Maurin in *L'Humanité* praised the humor and gags while noting an occasional impression of slowness.[14](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/critiques/presse/) On AlloCiné the film holds an average press and audience rating of 3.7 out of 5, based on 1,105 audience votes.[10](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm%3D94806.html)\n\nTruffaut died on 21 October 1984 at the age of 52, about a year after the film's release, leaving three scripts behind, one of which became *La Petite Voleuse*, directed by Claude Miller in 1988.[15](https://adrc-asso.org/sites/default/files/adrc/ged/Fran%C3%A7ois%20Truffaut.pdf) • [2](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/) The film has remained in circulation: MK2 Films holds distribution rights, and a new 4K restoration by MK2 was released theatrically in France on 7 August 2024 as part of a retrospective of five Truffaut heroines.[7](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/55509) • [9](https://adrc-asso.org/patrimoine/diffusion/films-et-cycles/vivement-dimanche)\n\nReported running times differ slightly across reference sources: the CNC lists 112 minutes, Cineuropa and the Swiss Cinémathèque list 110 minutes, the Quebec film registry lists 111 minutes, Larousse gives 1 h 51, and the ADRC catalog gives 1 h 55.[7](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/55509) • [5](https://cineuropa.org/fr/film/401350/) • [3](https://repertoire.cinema.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/film/vivement-dimanche-22527/) • [1](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617) • [9](https://adrc-asso.org/patrimoine/diffusion/films-et-cycles/vivement-dimanche)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Vivement dimanche, Larousse, Dictionnaire mondial des films](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Vivement_dimanche/10617)\n2. [Anecdotes du film Vivement dimanche!, AlloCiné](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/secrets-tournage/)\n3. [Vivement dimanche!, Répertoire des films classés, Québec](https://repertoire.cinema.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/film/vivement-dimanche-22527/)\n4. [Tout le film Vivement dimanche!, Séquences (Érudit)](https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/sequences/1983-n114-sequences1150940/50942ac.pdf)\n5. [Vivement dimanche!, Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/fr/film/401350/)\n6. [CINÉMA Truffaut le malicieux, Le Monde, 6 August 1983](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1983/08/06/cinema-truffaut-le-malicieux_3076411_1819218.html)\n7. [VIVEMENT DIMANCHE, fiche oeuvre, CNC Visas et Classification](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/55509)\n8. [Casting du film Vivement dimanche!, AlloCiné](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/casting/)\n9. [Vivement dimanche!, ADRC](https://adrc-asso.org/patrimoine/diffusion/films-et-cycles/vivement-dimanche)\n10. [Vivement dimanche!, fiche film, AlloCiné](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm%3D94806.html)\n11. [François Truffaut : ses secrets de fabrication, ses rages et ses indiscrétions, Le Monde, 19 October 2004](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2004/10/19/les-secrets-de-fabrication-les-rages-et-les-indiscretions-de-francois-truffaut_383603_1819218.html)\n12. [Vivement dimanche! and the French police genre, Cinémas (Érudit)](https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cine/2012-v22-n2-3-cine0199/1011654ar.pdf)\n13. [Rapport sur la leçon ou étude filmique portant sur Vivement dimanche!, Académie de Guyane](https://lettres.dis.ac-guyane.fr/IMG/pdf/letteresmodernes2df_262921.pdf)\n14. [Critiques Presse pour le film Vivement dimanche!, AlloCiné](https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-94806/critiques/presse/)\n15. [François Truffaut — Rétrospective, ADRC](https://adrc-asso.org/sites/default/files/adrc/ged/Fran%C3%A7ois%20Truffaut.pdf)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1980s › Satirical, black, and parody comedies of the 1980s*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Vivement dimanche!\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Vivement dimanche!](https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche](https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Vivement dimanche!\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/vivement-dimanche. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Vivement dimanche!, 1983 French black-and-white police comedy, François Truffaut's last film, adapted from Charles Williams' The Long Saturday Night, starring Fanny Ardant and Jean-Louis Trintignant, released 10 August 1983." }