Audiences may expect a French film shot in Paris in 1968 to make great play of the événements - the student riots that hit the city's streets, making international headlines. In his bittersweet Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés), new wave maverick François Truffaut shuns this anticipated stance, keeping the capital's escalating political tensions firmly in the background.

Stolen Kisses is the third episode in the director's partly autobiographical Antoine Doinel series. Set in a picture postcard Paris, the easy-going comedy follows 20-year-old Antoine (played by the handsome, iconic Jean-Pierre Leaud), who is discharged from the army after going AWOL once too often. Newly liberated the young dilettante hunts for employment, enduring a brief stint as a hotel clerk before becoming a private investigator.

Antoine makes for an amusingly inept detective, constantly attracting attention. While working undercover at a shoe store he falls for the manager's glamorous wife. But will he let his burgeoning lust jeopardise his new job - and his relationship with long-term love interest Christine (Claude Jade)?

Shot in between Truffaut's thrilling Cornell Woolrich adaptations, The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid, Stolen Kisses is a remarkably bookish picture, made by a director who once considered becoming a publisher. Freewheeling yet strangely schematic, it's bookended by Charles Trenet's melancholic 'Que reste-t-il de nos amours?' Truffaut took his title from one of the song's lines.

This light-hearted tale consists of a series of comic vignettes exploring a tight-knit selection of motifs, including role-play, guessing games and disappearing acts. Other, more familiar concerns also reappear, notably an infatuation with women and a general contempt for institutions. ("The army's like the theatre," one character interjects, "a fabulous anachronism.")

Stolen Kisses is dedicated to the Cinematheque Francaise - a Parisian picture house where the young Truffaut first fell for the movies.