L'amour en fuite

The problem with sequels is that they usually don't have the same impact as the original (can anybody tell me that ANY of the "Indiana Jones" movies after "Raiders" was worth a darn?). Truffaut took a big chance with the Antoine Doniel character and made 5 movies with Leaud playing him in all of them....instead of losing my interest, I found each installment compelling and wonderful in their own little ways...."Love On The Run", the final installment of the series, shows us a much older Antoine who's still confused as to what exactly love is....unlike "The 400 Blows", the impact can't be likened to a punch to the jaw, but is more subtle and infectious. Truffaut's ode to love, to Jean-Pierre Leaud, and to Antoine Doniel, does this cinematic sleight of hand with flashbacks to the other 4 movies, with re-introducing a lot of the characters (his ex-wife, Collette, and even the man he caught kissing his mom in the first movie), and paints a more complete picture of a man who finally stops running (no pun intended) from his wretched childhood, and who finally learns that love requires trust and sacrifice....a magnificent last chapter to one of cinema's most beloved characters. You might not realize it while watching it, but you'll still be seeing scenes from the movie running in your head for days afterwards.....

The spontaneous character Antoine Doinel, continues his journey through his show and tell, divorced from Christine, shacked up with Sabine, pursues long past fancies, but things don't quite gel.

We continue to observe the trials and tribulations that life presents to the often frustrated Antoine, with multiple flashbacks to previous presentations forming a significant part of the piece, you really need to be a fan of the series in order to appreciate the journey, the saga, the voyage, of the boy become man but still a boy. There's a good chance you can pick out numerous events that may align with your own passage, or from someone you know, which may escalate your appreciation. While an enjoyable piece, it does seem to have run its course, and left with more of a whimper than a whoop.

By finding an opportunity to firmly end his cycle of films about Antoine Doinel, Francois Truffaut gave himself a great advantage by permitting this film to go to any lengths necessary as long as it concludes the series, which has essentially been represented as a number of chapters portraying the lives of one unusual Parisian man.

In The 400 Blows, Antoine struggled with finding his place in the world as an adolescent and the relationship with his parents. In Antoine and Colette he found the pitfalls associated with love, a trend that would continue in Stolen Kisses and Bed and Board. Love on the Run is brilliantly done in the way that it incorporates all of these details via flashbacks and sequences designed to remind the audience of characters seen in previous films. Truffaut carefully edits these scenes in such a way as to appear as nostalgic memories as well as to aid along the audience in understanding the reasons and consequences of these characters' actions.

Once again, this story focuses mainly on Antoine's ability (or inability) to have a relationship with a woman only for nearly everything to go wrong. Truffaut wisely brought back the two most important women to Antoine, his wife of 5 years Christine and his first great love from his teen years Colette. Scenes between the two women are particularly well-done as we get a glimpse into some real soul-searching for this complex character. Antoine also has a new woman in his life, the charming and bubbly Sabine who plays a most important role in this story that also manages to include subplots involving Antoine's relationship to his parents and a bit of detective work reminiscent of that beautiful film, Stolen Kisses. Clearly, this entire series is one of the best in cinema history. By focusing on one man and all the adventures and problems he must face, Truffaut has created some of the most realistic and indelible fictional characters in all of art. In some ways, these people are more real than the ones we know for they combine knowledge, understanding and wisdom learned in the past as well as hope and courage for the future. All great things must come to an end and this ending is as perfect as films get: funny, poignant and so warm and tender. To understand why Truffaut was such a special artist, look no further than these five chapters depicting the life of Antoine Doinel.

This is Antoine Doinel's goodbye to all of us who followed his life and experiences through 20 years, from "The 400 Blows", "Antoine &t Colette", "Stolen Kisses" to "Bed & Board" and finally here in "Love on the Run"; from his problems at school to his life as a working man, married man, later divorced, reader, writer, lover, soldier, florist, private detective and more; in short a full life. Truffaut's alter ego (always played by the amazing Jean-Pierre Léaud) takes us through many moments of his life in the previous films while trying to correct few things in the present with his latest girl, Sabine (Dorothée).

Here, all the women of Doinel's life appears together and now he has a chance to figure out why his relationships simply doesn't work. Recently divorced of Christine (Claude Jade), and involved with no good terms with Sabine, Doinel meets again Colette (Marie-France Pisier), his first love and they share some secrets, remember some moments when they two met for the first time, and both characters discover more things about each other, about life and about love.

At the trivia section is mentioned that Truffaut thought about making a huge mistake while filming this sequel, and I think he shouldn't be ashamed of it. It isn't much of a film since half of it it's flashbacks taken from all of Doinel's films plus a few moments of "Le Nuit Americaine" included as an interesting subplot of Doinel's romantic affairs (even though he plays a different character in that film). Compared to the other movies of the series this is less comical, a little bit too serious and it's more focused on how the kid that seems to never grow finally realizes what love really is than his amusing and funny life experiences as a working man.

But seeing all the flashbacks, those memorable moments covering 20 years of a person is breathtaking, refreshing, unique in all motion picture history. We can look back and see how much Antoine/Léaud changed through these years and some of us practically saw him growing up and I bet Truffaut must have loved this experience, seeing someone he could relate with and share some of his own experiences and see them portrayed on screen. One of the most touching moments of "Love on the Run" is the reunion between Doinel and the lover of his mother, whom he haven't seen in years, and the way they talk about the past, we see scenes from "The 400 Blows" when Doinel was a kid and saw him with his mother, and he hated the guy for it, then few years later they are happy to see each other, a bond between Doinel's troubled life and his life while a grown up man.

Most of the reviews on this classic are very superficial here. "Love on the Run" is a memorable, delightful and magic experience through great moments of one of the most interesting, inspiring and charming characters of all time, and this is his goodbye to us, always striving, always fighting, always believing in something and always managing to get what he wants even though we as audience might think he'll be lost forever. Doinel echoes a part of us that never should die: our youth. 10/10

This is the fifth and last part of Francois Truffauts Antoine Doinel cycle, a biographical movie series about the growing up of a romantic Parisian, played by Jean Pierre Leaud all the time, and all his struggles with love and life which was produced over a period of 20 years.

This last part from 1978 shows us Doinel doing what he's also doing in the previous four parts - falling in love with numerous women, trying to keep up relationships, looking for love, flirting etc. While the first part from 1959 showed us Doinel's childhood in a poor family with a hard and beating father and his longing for respect and love, the following parts are less interesting in my opinion.

The final chapter is rather superfluous, with jokes falling flat, no real script, no suspense or a really interesting story line, and the actors are just running around most of the time. If you have watched the previous Doinel films it might be interesting to see this sequel (which is not really an end), but I suggest you to watch the first Doinel movie "Les 400 coups" ("The 400 Blows") instead, or Truffauts "L'homme qui l'amait les femmes" ("The Man Who Loved Women"), a far more interesting study on love, obsession and fetishism.