Les deux Anglaises et le continent

"Two English Girls" is a lyrical, amusing slice of Truffaut's unique vision and style of filmmaking. Like all great artists, he can shift his tone from lushly romantic to deadpan comic, from poetic to amusingly prosaic without missing a beat, and all the while keeping his story all of one piece. If you love Truffaut's voice, you'll love this film - charming, personal, light-hearted, with a touch of melancholy. Beautifully filmed, ably acted, with Leaud playing his benign cad so well.

Truffaut's this masterpiece is a novel adaptation. Truffaut's skillful story-telling meets with the magnificent performance of Léaud. The story seems to be melodramatic. Truffaut's biggest success in that film is the narrative clearness and "economy". Truffaut uses very subjective plots, but he never leaves the spirit of the story. The contrast of two sisters and the different point of views of English Ladies and the French gentleman creates the brilliant dramatic effect.Truffaut is also very successful about underlining the Freudian relationship of Anne and Muriel and their attitudes towards their mother.

The actor Jean-Pierre Leaud, the child star of Truffaut's breakthrough '400 Blows' and who plays the protagonist Claude in 'Deux Anglaises et le Continent' symbolises the flawed and tender charm at the heart of this 1971 film. Leaud can't act. Nevertheless, by dint of his solemn Gallic charm and beauty, there is something deeply moving about this turn-of-the- century cross-Channel menage-a-trois.

The story is an adaptation of a novel by Truffaut's beloved author Henri Pierre Roche who also wrote the novel which inspired 'Jules et Jim'. 'Deux Anglaises et le Continent' is written in diary form from the points of view of three characters, Anne, Muriel and Claude who make up the narrative's central love triangle. The story is basically one of thwarted love. Both English sisters develop strong feelings for their French 'brother' Claude, which eventually turns into destructive sexual passion. As such, the film is an inversion of 'Jules et Jim', which was a comic celebration of love between two close male friends and one girl. Stories of doomed love appealed to Truffaut.

When it appeared in cinemas, the film was a critical and commercial flop. In '71 society was in the grip of sexual liberation, and here was Truffaut, who had reflected the zeitgeist so perfectly six years earlier with a whimsical celebration of liberated passion in 'Jules et Jim' serving up a period piece more reminiscent of the buttoned-up prudery of a Bronte novel.

There are many things wrong with the film. There is an odd tension between the acceptance of Claude's promiscuity as a French fait accompli on the one hand, and the sisters' chaste Victorian values on the other. The film also contains anachronisms throughout which it's fun to spot, including modern electricity pylons. The first half of the film is set in Wales but you can tell it was filmed in Normandy (Truffaut didn't want to travel to a non-French speaking location.) There are several scenes in English in which the dialogue makes you squirm. And, in my opinion, it was an error of judgement on the film maker's part to record the voice-over narration himself in such a hasty, lacklustre tone.

And yet, and yet... There is something moving and wonderful at the heart of this film because it is naive. When it was made, society had moved on and women were taking the pill and changing history; the last thing it wanted was a pastel mood-piece about two thirty year-old virgins. But there is an innocence at the film's heart which is not sentimental but you could call it very male. On the one side you have Leaud's truly shocking moments of ham acting, stilted dialogue, unbelievable period settings and a generally plodding tone, but in the balance these are outweighed by the beauty of the cinematography, the fine performances from Kika Markham and Stacey Tendeter, the music, and Truffaut's genuine feeling for the intricacies of love in all its colours.

In the end of the Nineteenth Century, the English teenager Ann Brown (Kika Markham) travels from Wales to Paris and befriends the French Claude Roc (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and she invites him to visit her hometown, where she lives with her mother (Sylvia Marriot) and her younger sister Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). When Claude arrives at her home, Ann and Muriel become close friend of Claude, but Ann pushes Claude towards Muriel and they fall in love for each other. However their mothers propose a separation during one year without any communication between them to make them sure about their real feelings. But after six months in Paris, Claude is seduced by many love affairs and sends a letter to Muriel calling off their commitment. When Claude meets Ann in Paris later, they have a love affair; but Claude still has feelings for Muriel.

"Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent" is a pointless and dull romance with a melodramatic triangle of love that recalls a soap-opera most of the time. The cinematography, sets and costumes give a beautiful reconstitution of the period; the gorgeous Kika Markham and Stacey Tendeter have great performances; but the excessive narrative of the obvious is irritating and the feature could be shorter. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "As Duas Inglesas e o Amor" ("The Two Englishwomen and the Love")

A mildly moving, inoffensive Truffaut movie about a young French bloke (played by Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Léaud, far more remarkable in movies such as Les Quatrecent Coups) who in turn romances two English (or rather, Welsh!) sisters, set during the first decade of the 20th century. It's a French movie and features a love triangle, so that for a start could have turned it into a potentially unoriginal and cliché-ridden affair. Yet the main problem I had with it wasn't so much the well-treaded theme of the love triangle, as the voice-over which somehow gave the feeling the narrative was rather weak (and I suspect it was). The characters of the two sisters, especially the older sister, were surprisingly better drawn than the male lead's (or maybe it just had something to do with the fact the two actresses playing them were more appealing than the inexpressive, boyish Léaud - I simply could not bring myself to believe that these two girls would both feel so attracted to such a bland young man! He was definitely more engaging as Antoine Doinel!). The movie was also successful at portraying something of the difficulty in relations between the sexes in the Edwardian era - how young men and women really needed to go clandestine if they hoped to even get to know each other decently (not just carnally but also emotionally). The issue of women's sexuality, and how it was virtually denied them in this epoch - the price to be paid for so-called respectability - is also a theme that's successfully conveyed by the movie. How could a woman rightfully claim her own sexual identity in such a day and age? An interesting question worth raising. Fortunately, we were spared any simplistic clichés contrasting "libertine France" vs. "strait-laced Britain" as well.

This is on the whole also a good-looking movie, with lovely sets, costumes and photography. One question: why does everyone in the movie (including the title) keep referring to the two sisters as English when they live in Wales and define themselves as Welsh?