Themes: Love Triangles, Sexual Awakening, Self-Destructive Romance
Main Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Kika Markham, Stacey Tendeter, Sylvia Marriott, Philippe Léotard
Release Year: 1971
Country: FR
Run Time: 130 minutes
Plot
Among the great François Truffaut films, Two English Girls is likely the least known. Its story of a romantic triangle inevitably invites comparison to Truffaut's Jules and Jim, and not surprisingly, as both are based on novels by Henri-Pierre Roche (the only two novels Roche authored). Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Leaud is Claude, the Frenchman who on a turn-of-the-century trip to Wales with his mother meets the Brown sisters, Anne (Kika Markham) and Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). Anne is a sculptress and more outgoing than Muriel, who is a teacher. Over the next 20 years, affections between Claude and the sisters shift, but consummation of any romantic feelings is often blocked by distance, a pair of very strong-willed mothers, and the conventions of the time. Claude becomes an art critic, and the trio each has to express blocked passions in his or her work. Disappointed by the mild reception that greeted the original version of the film, Truffaut determined to restore over 20 minutes of footage to the film, a project he completed just before he died in 1984. The posthumously released, full-length version rounds out the characters and their motives and makes Two English Girls worthy of comparison to The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, and Day for Night in the Truffaut filmography. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Review
As befitting one of the screen's great romantics, director François Truffaut made one of his last projects before he died of cancer in 1984 -- the restoration of this neglected film. In some ways, the geometry of the triangular romance in Two English Girls is more satisfying than that of Jules and Jim, in part because of the more tangled relationship between the same-sex angles of the triangle (here, they are sisters, not just friends as Jules and Jim were), and also because the apex of the triangle here, Jean-Pierre Leaud's Claude, is a much more complicated person than Jeanne Moreau's free-spirited Catherine in the first film. The barriers the story sets up to physical expression of romance and the possibility of life-long commitment allow for plenty of shifting over the years, as first one sister loves Claude and then the other, and vice versa. As in all his films, Truffaut lets his characters talk endlessly about love, sometimes because they're unable to act on their feelings, more often because they're unwilling or uncertain. Truffaut idealizes love but is unafraid to suggest its imperfections, that it's likely that no two lovers will ever be as much in synch with one another as they imagine. Two English Girls expresses that notion as well as any film in his marvelous career. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Marie Mansart - Claire; Sophie Baker - Friend in Cafe; Marcel Berbert - Art Dealer; Jean-Claude Dolbert - English Policeman; René Gaillart - Taxi Driver; Marie Irakane - Maid; Sophie Jeanne - Clarisse; Anne Levaslot - Muriel as a Child; Jeanne Lobre - Jeanne; David Markham - Palmist; Annie Miller - Monique de Monferrand; Christine Pelle - Claude's Secretary; Mark Peterson - Mr. Flint; Guillaume Schiffman - Children; Mathieu Schiffman - Child; Ewa Truffaut - Child; Irène Tunc - Ruta; Georges Delerue - Claude's Business Agent; François Truffaut - Narrator
Credit
Gitt Magrini - Costume Designer, François Truffaut - Director, Yan Dedet - Editor, Georges Delerue - Composer (Music Score), Michel de Broin - Production Designer, Néstor Almendros - Cinematographer, Claude Miller - Producer, Jean Gruault - Screenwriter, François Truffaut - Screenwriter, Henri-Pierre Roché - Book Author
