Another movie by Truffaut based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, just as "Jules and Jim". In fact it was the authors only two books now both adapted to film by the same director. There are similarities to the former book and movie, so a comparison is in place. Another thing that may be of interest is to know that Truffaut was going through a depression at this point in time and I believe it influenced his choices - and not in a positive way. I might add that this Artificial Eye blu-ray edition is the directors original cut and not the 25 min. shorter version he edited shortly after a disappointing, critical reception in 1971.
It is a saga spanning over the first two decades of the twentieth century. This is not important in a historic context, but more as a reference to the social norms and culture of those times. We follow the relationship between welsh women Anne (Kika Markham) and Muriel (Stacey Tendeter )and french Author Claude (Jean-Pierre Léaud). Through their mothers being old friends, Anne and Claude meet in Paris and then Claude is invited to stay for the summer at her mothers remote seaside house in Wales.
Anne has a secret wish that, even if she herself is a bit in love with Claude, her sister Muriel will fall in love with- and potentially marry him but the situation turns into a predictable "menage a trois" lovestory, basically like Jules and Jim, just with opposite sexes. The girl´s mother realizes that particularly Muriel and Claude are starting to get "aroused" and she interferes by demanding that they stay apart for a year, after Claude leaves for Paris.
The sequence in Wales is very attractively shot and Truffaut manages to choose several memorable scenes that truly illustrates his sense of composition. But from then on the plot gets kind of messy and hurried. Claude reconnects with his artists circles. Muriel feels more and more lonely in her emotional and sexual cage out in the middle of nowhere. Anne travels to Paris to pursue her ambitions as a skulpturer.
Off course she hooks up with Claude and they start an affair. He takes her to a shag cabin on a remote lake island in Switzerland and finally gets to have sex with her. Sexually invigorated, she suddenly starts an affair with Claude´s publisher Diurka and moves to Persia with him - and with Claude´s blessing. Meanwhile Muriel sinks into a depression as she learns of the affair between her sister and Claude. Then suddenly Anne gets very ill, returns to Wales and dies with her new lover at her side.
Claude then learn from Diurka, that Muriel has decided to take a job in Belgium presumably leaving Wales for good due to the memory of her time with her dead sister in the old house. Claude arranges that they meet in Calais and they finally get to have sex together. She is a virgin which the red stains on the linen clearly reveals, though there are no white stains, which i suppose would be considered gross.
Claude later learns that Muriel became pregnant and he starts to feel confident that they will start a family together. But then Muriel looses the child and she disappears for good. Years later we see Claude wander around streets fantasizing about the playing children potential could have been one of his and how Anne could have developed as an artist, if she had not died.
There are several big problems with this movie. The pacing is very unbalanced. The Wales part is nice and slow and builds the relationship quite nicely. But then everything starts to accelerate and big moments in the plot and the story flies by in a moment that is easily lost if you are not accelerating along. Then there is the choice of structure between cinematography and narration. I think I know what Truffaut was aiming at, but it is a complete failure in my view. The film feels like a stiff rendition of a storyboard version of the movie it could have been, with all emotions, particularly of Claude, narrated instead of acted.
And that leads me to the biggest criticism. Jean-Pierre Léaud simply is not a good actor. He is stiff and emotionless. His movements are awkward and feels choreographed as if he counts his steps in his head. He looks like a boy in his late teens, not a mature man capable of being the center of a menage a trois between two grown, yet complicated, women from a foreign country. There are particular scenes that makes my toes curl. Like in the house in Wales when stones are thrown at his window to get his attention. He moves like a robot looking up at the window then down at his papers again. After another stone he looks up art it again with exactly same expression but then reluctantly decides to go and open the window. Then there is a scene on the stairs where he reaches to caress Muriels neck. It looks so dilettante and robot like i am impressed that Truffaut chose to keep it. These are just a few examples, but Léaud is a literal stone face of boredom throughout the entire movie. At some point there is a big blob of a lens flare that crosses the screen from right to left. I am sure this is not intentional, since it has no artistic feel to it whatsoever. That may be a small thing but not something i think that Truffaut would allow on a good day.
Léaud is a favorite of Truffaut, no doubt about that. He was the boy in "The 400 Blows", a movie that propelled Truffaut to the stars in an instant winning the Cannes that year. And the autobiographical sides of Truffaut also works in favor of Léaud, since he is a spitting image of him and i presume constantly keeps Truffaut in an inspirational zone he enjoyed. But this has obviously led to a lack of objectivity in judging Léaud´s true abilities as an actor and Truffaut blows it big time here choosing him as the male lead. The girls do a much better job but despite their efforts they never get to shine in any way during the 2+ hours.
This is the kind of movie that sounds so good on paper. "A bittersweet tale of love imperfectly expressed andpassion unwisely spent" as one referenced critic puts it. But it does not work. It is a piece of uninspired acting that feels like a storyboard version of a much better movie, narrated to death, without any real or engaging emotions coming forth from the actors. Truffaut even use fake tears on Muriel in a double exposure scene, since it is quite long and he apparently would not risk the moisture disappearing. Truffauts own ambitious elevation of a director to "auteur" bites him in the ass and reveals that he is not able to put a rather simple story together in an engaging manner. I did not care all that much for the "Jules and Jim" movie, but I would rather watch that at half speed than sit through "Two English Girls" again.
Rating: 2/10
