There is a bite and a force to [The Man Who Loved Women, a] saga of a French provincial sad-faced skirt-chaser that places Truffaut for the moment halfway between the realms of Renoir and Bunuel. It may be that Truffaut is finally getting old enough to make the confessional mode of filmmaking pay off in emotional resonance. Here he has seemed to get deeper into his psyche than usual without at the same time seeming to repeat himself stylistically. One recognizes the Truffaut trademarks: the undigestedly literary form of narration, the privileged moments of fresh-air documentary, the construction of characters through maxims and meditations, the jolting awareness of the artist's arbitrary control over his material….

The darker aspects of the subject are emphasized by framing the narrative with the funeral of the protagonist…. Here was no man's man, but a woman's man, not a Don Juan or a...