Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		2.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.5

Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov July 30, 2025

Francois Truffaut's "Stolen Kisses" a.k.a. "Baisers volés" (1968) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the release include archival introduction by Serge Toubiana; recent documentary about Francois Truffaut; archival material; and more. In French, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

Shortly after he is declared unfit to serve in the army and discharged with a warning that he would never ever get a decent job, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud, The 400 Blows) visits a small Parisian brothel and buys himself an hour of pleasure. Much to his disappointment, however, the girl he chooses to make love with tells him that she does not kiss her clients.

Antoine then visits the home of his girlfriend, Christine Darbon (the beautiful Claude Jade, Assassination Attempt), whose parents help him get a job as a night clerk at a shady Montmartre hotel. A few days later, however, he loses it after a private detective (Harry-Max, The Maurizius Affair) tricks him and he compromises a guest of the hotel. Moved by his sincerity, the detective recommends Antoine to the Blady Detective Agency, whose owner agrees to try him out as a private eye. After a few small assignments Antoine gets a big one -- he becomes an undercover shoe salesman in the small but elegant store of Monsieur Tabard (Michael Lonsdale, The Day of the Jackal), who is convinced that his employees hate him and is dying to find out why. While gathering the information Monsieur Tabard needs, Antoine develops a crush on the sexually frustrated Madame Tabard (Delphine Seyrig, Last Year at Marienbad). But when she eventually attempts to seduce him, he panics and quits his job. While making ends meet as a TV repairman, Antoine then concludes that it is time for him and Christine to start a family together.

Completed only a few months before the student riots in Paris (May, 1968), Stolen Kisses is the third installment in Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series. The other films in the series are The 400 Blows, Bed and Board, Love on the Run, and the short Antoine and Colette (included in the omnibus Love at Twenty a.k.a. L'amour à vingt ans).

Stolen Kisses is essentially a romantic comedy about a young man trying to fit into a world that has changed too quickly and made him a vulnerable outsider. Despite his eccentric behavior, he quickly wins the viewer’s sympathy because he never blames the people around him for his failures.

Though Truffaut had a difficult time shooting Stolen Kisses -- during its production, together with Jean-Luc Godard he was fully committed to defending the honor of Henri Langlois, the founder and director of Cinematheque francaise, who was dismissed by the then-current French Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux -- that lightness and sense of the idyllic Paris, the great city of love, that were present in The 400 Blows are very easy to detect in it. Stolen Kisses is equally fluid and genuinely unpredictable, too. (Its unpredictability comes from the fantastic improvisations that Truffaut left in its final version).

The cast is excellent. Jade, who made her acting debut in Stolen Kisses, is especially good as Antoine’s girlfriend. Seyrig also leaves a memorable impression as the bored Madame Tabard. Leaud looks appropriately brittle and innocent throughout the entire film.

Antoine Duhamel‘s melancholic soundtrack fits perfectly with the mood of the film. Charles Trenet’s classic song Que reste-t-il de nos amours, which inspired the title, can also be heard multiple times.

Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Criterion's release of Stolen Kisses is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. The 4K Blu-ray is Region-Free. However, the Blu-ray is Region-A "locked".

Please note that some of the screencaptures included with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc.

Screencaptures #1-32 are from the Blu-ray.
Screencaptures #35-40 are from the 4K Blu-ray.

The release introduces the recent 4K restoration of Stolen Kisses that was completed at the French lab Hiventy on behalf of MK2. In native 4K, the 4K restoration can be viewed with Dolby Vision and HDR grades. I chose to view it with HDR. Later, I spent time with its 1080p presentation on the Blu-ray.

I have several DVD and Blu-ray releases of Stolen Kisses from different regions. The only Blu-ray release is this release, which was also made available in The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: Five Films by François Truffaut box set, produced by Artificial Eye in 2014. It is sourced from a pretty good master, but offers a very underwhelming presentation of Stolen Kisses. (It is poorly encoded and as a result many visuals produce very distracting compression artifacts).

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the new 4K restoration is even more disappointing. It is a complete digital reimagination that frequently makes Stolen Kisses look like a contemporary production. This digital reimagination also shares virtually all of the big anomalies that are present on Hiventy's similarly disappointing 4K restorations of Jacques Deray's La Piscine a.k.a. The Swimming Pool and Krzysztof Kieślowski's White. For example, the original color scheme of Stolen Kisses is replaced by a prominent yellowish/greenish tint that skews all primaries and supporting nuances, producing oddly colored visuals, many with a distorted dynamic range, too. In darker visuals, shadow nuances in particular can be quite problematic. You can see an example here. In outdoor footage, the new tint also creates very random temperature shifts, like the one seen here. While the raw 4K files produce healthy grain, I noticed many areas of the film where grain exposure is unconvincing. (The same issue is present on the 1080p presentation of La Piscine). Needless to say, Stolen Kisses does not look right now, so neither the native 4K nor the 1080p presentations of it can be considered an upgrade in quality. Both are disappointing downgrades in quality.

Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this release: French LPCM 1.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The audio is nicely rounded and very healthy. In some areas of the film, small unevenness can be noticed, but this is an inherited limitation. (One such area is early in the film, right before Antoine Doinel picks up his date and the two head to a nearby hotel). Clarity and sharpness are very good. Dynamic intensity is unlikely to impress viewers who appreciate the potent soundtracks that contemporary action films have. The best contrasts emerge when Antoine Duhamel's music has a role to play.

Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

4K BLU-RAY DISC

• Bonus Features - there are no bonus features on the disc.

BLU-RAY DISC

• Introducing My Father, Francis Truffaut - in this recent documentary, Laura Truffaut, daughter of Francois Truffaut, remembers her father. The documentary was produced by Daniel Raim in 2019. In English and French, with English subtitles where necessary. (26 min).

• Video Essay - this archival introduction to Stolen Kisses by Serge Toubiana, former president of Cinémathèque française. In French, with English subtitles. (4 min).

• Doinel and Leaud - presented here is an excerpt from an archival episode of Cineastes de notre temps in which Francois Truffaut discusses Jean-Pierre Leaud's famous character, Antoine Doinel. The episode was broadcast in 1970. In French, with English subtitles. (8 min).

• The Langlois Affair - presented here is a collage of newsreels chronicling the controversial attempt to remove Henri Langlois as the head of Cinematheque francaise, which had a profound impact on Francois Truffaut's career. The footage is narrated by film historian Bernard Eisenschitz. In French, with English subtitles. (13 min).

• Clip for Henri Langlois - an archival message to French moviegoers from Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. In French, with English subtitles. (1 min).

• Cannes, 1968 - presented here is an excerpt from Selim Sasson's newsreel Cannes 1968 in which several directors, including Francois Truffaut, are seen campaigning for the cancellation of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival in support of the ongoing efforts to oust Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque francaise. In French, with English subtitles. (8 min).

• Trailer - presented here is a vintage trailer for Stolen Kisses. In French, with English subtitles. (4 min).

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

• Booklet - 50-page illustrated booklet featuring essays by Annette Insdorf, Kent Jones, Andrew Sarris, Noah Baumbach, and Chris Fujiwara, and a 1971 piece by Francois Truffaut, as well as technical credits.

Stolen Kisses 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

French lab Hiventy's new 4K restoration of Stolen Kisses is a wild digital reimagination of the wonderful film Francois Truffaut shot in 1968. I think that it is very easy to tell, too. This is unfortunate, but hardly surprising. Stolen Kisses is inlcuded in Criterion's The Adventures of Antoine Doinel eight-disc box set.