The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Love on the Run (1979)

Love on the Run (1979)
Directed by: François Truffaut.
Written by: François Truffaut & Marie-France Pisier & Jean Aurel & Suzanne Schiffman.
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel), Marie-France Pisier (Colette Tazzi), Claude Jade (Christine Doinel), Dani (Liliane), Dorothée (Sabine Barnerias), Daniel Mesguich (Xavier Barnerias), Julien Bertheau (Monsieur Lucien).

Through four features and one short over a 20 year span, Francois Truffaut tracked the progression of his alter ego, Antoine Doinel. Love on the Run came nine years after the fourth in the series – Bed and Board – and is easily the weakest of the entries. Truffaut himself said he was not satisfied with it, and as such, he was never going to make another Antoine Doinel film. Had he lived longer, perhaps he would have changed his mind. And yet, despite the fact that Love on the Run is the weakest of the series, that doesn’t mean it is a weak film. It is still expertly crafted, with star Jean-Pierre Leaud effortlessly filling out the lead role once again. Once again, Antoinne seems to have changed little with time – he is still a man running from one woman to the next, never quite sure of what he wants.

It is now 10 years after the end of Bed and Board, which saw Antoine and Christine (Claude Jade) get back together after a brief separation caused by his affair with a Japanese woman. Apparently, in the decade since, Antoine has had more affairs, and the two were in a constant state of quasi separation – together for a while, apart for a while over and over. They have finally decided to get a divorce, but it remains amicable. They are the first couple in France to get divorced by mutual consent, and Christine still loves Antoine, but can no longer be married to him – not even for the sake of their child Alphonse.

It hasn’t taken long for Antoine to move on. He is already in a relationship with Sabine (Dorothee), although he remains only half committed to it – proclaiming his love when he’s with her, but constantly dashing out the door. Then he runs into his old love Collette (Marie-France Pisier, reprising her role from the short Antoinne et Colette) – and the two start talking again, especially after Colette reads the way Antoine portrayed her in his “novel”.

Truffaut said the reason he was not happy with Love on the Run, is because of the flashback or memory sequences in the film, that he feels he did not integrate well enough into the rest of the movie. Throughout the film, there are numerous clips from the four previous installments of the series, which act as a kind of memory for the film, and shows the characters progression from where they were to where they are. I have to admit, Truffaut has a point. Not all of the memory sequences really work all that well – although Truffaut certainly does what he can with them, and they are necessary to the plot, as the film is, in part, about the different way everyone remembers what happened. The problem is, that the films show the objective truth, not really memory, so Truffaut has to pick and choose the scenes carefully, to show not the difference between what happened and memory, but on the different moments each chooses to emphasize in their own mind. It’s a tricky gambit, that only partially pays offs.

But I did quite like the present scenes in the movie, that shows Antoine’s refusal to grow up and have a real relationship, and yet how the women in his past cannot help but love him anyway. It’s somewhat telling that when he hits a rough patch with Sabine, that both Christine and Colette go to her apartment to try and smooth things over on his behalf - she isn’t home, but the two run into each other and talk of Antoine. This may be the best scene in the movie, and it underlines just how self involved Antoine is. After all, in Stolen Kisses (the third installment), Antoine ran into Colette on the street, with her husband and daughter, and now she seemingly appears single. But Antoine is too self involved to even ask what happened, whereas it is the first question Christine has. Christine is soft hearted and caring, whereas Antoine remains self involved.

Truffaut has said that while Antoine Doinel started off very autobiographical in The 400 Blows and Antoine et Colette, as the series progressed, Antoine grew further away from him. Perhaps that’s why, by the time we get to Love on the Run, Truffaut seems a little disconnected from the material. After all, by the time Truffaut got to be the age of Doinel in Love on the Run, he had made himself into a successful filmmaker. Whereas Doinel is still drifting. Perhaps that’s why Truffaut felt he could stop this series after Love on the Run – because any further adventures in love that Doinel may have had are all just going to be repeats of what has come before.

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: The Woman Next Door (1981)

The Woman Next Door (1981)
Directed by: François Truffaut.
Written by: François Truffaut & Suzanne Schiffman and Jean Aurel.
Starring: Gérard Depardieu (Bernard Coudray), Fanny Ardant (Mathilde Bauchard), Henri Garcin (Philippe Bauchard), Michèle Baumgartner (Arlette Coudray), Roger Van Hool (Roland Duguet), Véronique Silver (Madame Odile Jouve).

Francois Truffaut was a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. The book length interview that Truffaut did with Hitchcock is certainly necessary reading for fans of either filmmaker. Watching Truffaut’s 1981 film The Woman Next Door, it’s hard not to think of Hitchcock. True, the film may not quite be a thriller in the way Hitchcock made them, and yet it recalls the tone of some Hitchcock’s best films. While I certainly do not think it’s one of Truffaut’s best efforts, it is a fascinating film nonetheless.

Gerard Depardieu stars as Bernard, who lives a happy life out in the French countryside with his wife, Arlette (Michele Baumgartner) and their young son. Everything seems idyllic until the vacant house next door suddenly finds new tenants. Bernard meets the husband, Phillippe (Henri Garcin) first and is friendly with him. Then he meets the wife – Mathilde (Fanny Ardant), and he turns cold. He was involved with Mathilde a few years before he met his wife, and the relationship was passionate, yet dysfunctional and ended badly. Still, the problems that arise later in the movie may well have been avoided had Bernard simply told Arlette the truth. Which he doesn’t. Things are made worse by the fact that Mathilde doesn’t tell Phillippe the truth either.

Bernard tries to stay away from Mathilde, who just wants to talk at first, but he cannot. They are drawn together, even though both had thought they had moved on and become happy since their relationship ended. They both know it’s wrong, but they cannot help it. An affair begins, that will eventually consume them – first driving him to do things he didn’t think possible, and then her to take things even a step further.

For the most part, when I think of Truffaut’s films, I think of his lightness of touch and the gentle comedy in which he brings to his movies, even when they are more serious in nature. That comedy is missing in The Woman Next Door, because it wouldn’t really be appropriate. There is nothing funny about this affair that consumes these two people, and will ruin many others lives. Yet, Truffaut’s skill and style is still there. His camera forever moving, watching from a distance as these two circle the drain together. The ending is heartbreaking, and yet completely appropriate.

Ultimately, I do not think that The Woman Next Door is quite a great movie. There is greatness in it – from Truffaut’s direction to the performances by Depardieu and Ardant, and his portrait of small town life. And yet, at times, the films drags a little bit. Hitchcock, I feel, would have known better and cut some of the movie down a little bit, to bring it to its violent conclusion faster. Yet, if the worst thing you can say about a film is that Hitchcock would have done it slightly better, I still consider that to be a high compliment.

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: Bed and Board (1970)

Bed and Board (1970)
Directed by: François Truffaut.
Written by: François Truffaut and Claude de Givray and Bernard Revon.
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel), Claude Jade (Christine Darbon Doinel), Hiroko Berghauer (Kyoko), Barbara Laage (Monique), Danièle Girard (Ginette), Daniel Ceccaldi (Lucien Darbon), Claire Duhamel (Madame Darbon)

Once Antoine Doinel gets what he wants, he doesn’t want it anymore. He is happier in his misery of not having what he wants than in actually succeeding in getting it. In Bed and Board, his fourth appearance in Francois Truffaut’s films, we see that Doinel has what he wanted in the previous three films – The 400 Blows, Antoine et Collette and Stolen Kisses – a family. Someone to love. And he almost immediately ruins that.

In The 400 Blows, Antoine was a strangely passive juvenile delinquent, rebelling against any situation he found himself in, and yet never becoming violent – avoiding decisions at all costs. In Antoine et Collette, he was in love with a girl who just wanted to be friends – and is devastated when he finally realizes it. In Stolen Kisses, he bounces around from job to job, from his desire to have Christine (Claude Jade) and to sleep with his boss’ wife (Delphine Seyrig). Antoine loves being in love – but he doesn’t know how to be in a relationship. Perhaps that’s why he seems so comfortable with prostitutes.

Bed and Board opens with Antoine and Christine being married. They live in a small apartment, and the first third of the movie involves their happy, little life together, that all revolves around their apartment and the little courtyard outside, where Antoine works dying flowers. They have a strange assembly of neighbors, that could probably only exist in the movies. Then Christine tells Antoine she is pregnant – and he is thrilled. He loses his job dying flowers, and through a mix up gets a job with an American company, which consists mainly of him driving toy boats around in a large, outdoor model. While he loves his son, Alphonse, when he is born, he is also drawn to Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer), a Japanese woman who visits the firm. He embarks on an affair with her, which will cause Christine to throw him out when she discovers the truth. Almost immediately, Antoine tires of Kyoko – she is so polite, says thank you all the time, and he’s getting tired of eating on the floor. He wants Christine back, even though just a short while ago, he wanted out of the marriage that was stifling him, and into the affair with the exotic Kyoko. Some men just cannot be happy.

What is most interesting about the Antoine Doinel series is how different each entry is to each other, while at the same time definitely being apart of a whole. The 400 Blows was sad, realistic film about a boy that was unwanted and unloved. Antoine et Collette was a comic film about unrequited love. Stolen Kisses was a beautiful, wistful comedy about the insanity of love. And now Bed and Board is about a man who can never be happy with what he has – who always wants something else. Together, they form a portrait of Antoine as a man who never knows what he wants – who has trouble making decisions. He is even confused when he goes to a brothel in this film, and has to choose which prostitute he wants when they all line up in front of him. He is the most passive of movie characters, as he simply lets everything wash over him – let’s others take the lead, as he drifts from one event to another, with forethought. As Doinel, Jean Pierre Leaud is pretty much perfect. By this point, the role fit him like a glove, and he does an excellent job navigating Antoine’s passiveness. Claude Jade, as Christine, is perhaps even better than Leaud in this film. She was the unattainable beauty in Stolen Kisses, but in Bed and Board, she becomes a real character. A woman with thoughts and feelings, who is hurt by how Antoine treats her. There is something going on beneath that beauty.

The movie ends, I suppose, on a happy note. But perhaps not really. Antoine and Christine are back together, but are they in love? Is Antoine capable of loving Christine? Of loving anyone? I guess, I’ll have to watch the final installment, Love on the Run, to find out.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Stolen Kisses (1968)

Stolen Kisses (1968)
Directed by: François Truffaut.
Written by: François Truffaut and Claude de Givray and Bernard Revon.
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel), Delphine Seyrig (Fabienne Tabard), Claude Jade (Christine Darbon), Michael Lonsdale (Georges Tabard), Harry-Max (Monsieur Henri), André Falcon (Monsieur Blady), Daniel Ceccaldi (Lucien Darbon), Claire Duhamel (Madame Darbon), Catherine Lutz (Catherine).

Francois Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses moves with effortless grace, moving from comedy to harsh truths in the blink of an eye. Stolen Kisses is about love and lust, and how they drive everyone crazy to one degree or another. It is at perhaps Truffaut’s most dreamy and romantic feature – and one of his best.

Back for the third time is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who we first saw as a juvenile delinquent in 1959’s The 400 Blows, and then in the 1962 short Antoine et Collette, where he was obsessed with a girl who just wanted to be his friend. We first see Doinel in this film being dishonorably discharged from the army – apparently he had a habit of going AWOL – but Doinel doesn’t seem to much care. He goes straight from the army to the house of Christine (Claude Jade), his one time girlfriend. Her parents are happy to see him, but inform him Christine is away for a few days, but do arrange for Antoine to have a job as night clerk at a hotel. He doesn’t last long there – but he does catch the eye of a Private Detective, who gets Antoine a job with his firm. Antoine isn’t much good at that job either – some of the funniest scenes in the movie are his inept attempts at surveillance – but he tries hard. Eventually, he will be assigned to become a mole at a shoe store – the boss, who hires him, wants to know why everyone hates him so much. Antoine doesn’t really help matters by falling in love with the boss’s wife Fabienne (the great Delphine Seyrig). All this, while he continues in his quest to win back Christine.

Of course, Truffaut based Antoine on himself, and in Stolen Kisses, we see perhaps why Truffaut became a filmmaker – he was horrible at pretty much every other job he had. Antoine isn’t tormented by his family life, like in The 400 Blows, and he isn’t stuck in a cycle of unrequited love, as in Antoine et Collette, but he hasn’t really moved forward either. He signed up for the army because he thought it would fun and romantic – but ended up hating it, and running away. Antoine, in his way, is far too trusting. He gets fired from the hotel because he believed the PI’s story, which we in the audience knows is suspect. And as a surveillance specialist, Antoine fails, because he is far too forward – his marks make him right away, and grow uncomfortable with him following them. They end up losing him in a block or two.

But Stolen Kisses is really about love, and the crazy things it does to people. Antoine and Christine’s relationship is complicated. Like with Collette, her parents seem to like him more than Christine does. Because Antoine’s parents were so bad themselves, he seems to seek the approval of his girlfriend’s parents – trying very hard to make a good impression. But for much of the movie, Christine seems lukewarm to Antoine – not unlike Collette in the previous movie – and Antoine is simply a little lost. He goes to prostitutes, he falls in love with Fabiene, and when finally he has Christine, he isn’t sure he actually wants her. The theme of love making people crazy is seen throughout the movie – the magician’s lover who wants him tailed, and goes crazy when he finds out his lover is married, Fabiene being drawn to Antoine as well, and even down to the final shot, when a stalker confesses his love to Christine – who dismisses him as crazy. But Antoine understands this stalker – and that look on his face seems to suggest that perhaps he wishes he still felt that way. Of course, being infatuated from afar is easy – having a relationship is hard (and I believe that is what the next segment, Bed and Board is about).

Truffaut’s camera moves effortlessly around the streets of Paris. He doesn’t quite shoot it to look as romantic as Woody Allen in the recent Midnight in Paris, but he certainly does capture the magic and romance of the city – just not in quite the way we are accustomed to. I admit, it took me a little time to warm up to Truffaut, but now that I am hooked, I cannot wait to continue to explore his work. Stolen Kisses was masterful, and yet effortless. I hope the next installment is as good.

The Best Movies I Have Never Seen Before: Antoinne et Collette (1962)

Antoine et Colette (1962) *** ½

Directed by: François Truffaut.

Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud (Antoine Doinel), Marie-France Pisier (Colette), Patrick Auffay (René), François Darbon (Colette's Stepfather), Rosy Varte (Colette's Mother).

There has never been a cinematic alter ego for a director as well known Antoine Doinel was for Francois Truffuat. Truffaut’s first film, The 400 Blows, followed Doinel as a young teenager, struggling at home and at school, and eventually turning to street life and petty crime, before being sent to a reform school. This was the film that made Truffaut’s reputation, and remains one of the seminal works of the French New Wave. Truffaut based the film on his own experiences growing up. In 1962, he was approached to be part of an omnibus film, Love at Twenty, and decided to make a sequel to The 400 Blows, called Antoine et Colette, where we know see Antoine a few years older, on his own and supporting himself working at a record factory. He becomes obsessed with a beautiful girl named Colette, who he meets at the orchestra. The rest of the film follows Antoine’s attempts to win her over – but she just wants to be friends.

The film is short – about a half hour – but it certainly does stand the test of the time, and is one of the best films about unrequited love I can remember. Jean-Pierre Leaud once again plays Antoine, who has settled down a little bit in the year between the movies, become more mature and responsible. He no longer has to depend on anyone but himself for support – his parents are out of the picture, he doesn’t go to school, etc. He can do what he wants. What he really wants is Colette.

The early scenes in the film are brilliantly staged by Truffaut. We see Antoine settle into his seat at the orchestra, and then catch a glimpse of the beautiful Colette. Again and again, he shows up there to try and catch a look at her, and later, he tries to maneuver himself into a position where he can sit next to her. Eventually, the two of the talk, and flirt, and agree to meet again. What this means to Antoine, and what this means to Colette, of course, mean two entirely different things.

Antoine et Colette is an amusing, light hearted film. I’ll bet most people can relate to poor Antoine, having a crush on someone as a teenager, and believing their relationship is far more than it is to the other person. I enjoyed the scenes where Antoine meets her parents, and tries to be respectful, and how much sympathy they have for him. But if nothing else, Antoine should have clued in that Colette thinks of him as little more than a friend when her response to his love letter begins “Your letter was very well written…” Not exactly the response he was hoping for.

Antoine et Colette may be a minor work by a major director, but that doesn’t mean it is not worthy of attention. This is the film that often gets overlooked in the Antoine Doinel catalogue, because it is a short. But there is genuine emotion here – the last scene is almost heartbreaking – and it really is Truffaut pouring out his soul. For some reason, I had not seen any of the Doinel films after The 400 Blows, but after watching this film, I intend to correct that as soon as possible.