Two English Girls (Les deux anglaises et le continent)
by Francois Truffaut
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Markham, Jean-Pierre L?aud, Kika Markham, Philippe L?otard, Sylvia MarriottDirector: Francois Truffaut
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled)
Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-05-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Two English Girls (Les deux anglaises et le continent)
Movie Review: Freckled rebellion
Summary: 4 Stars
The great films of Truffuat are those where the director's playful stylism is counterweighed by an emotionally attuned surface-layer of depth. "Two English Girls", although very much a beauty, isn't one of those. It's not marked by the virtuoso camera work of early masterworks such as "Shoot The Piano Player", or the astutely awed comedic detail of "Day For Night" or even by a gargantuan performance like "The Wild Child". And missing most, is Truffaut's great talent in invoking a child's world of wonder (so proudly displayed (in his best film) "Small Change")...but it's not all bad.
Thankfully, this film has two immediate merits that make it unexpendible: 1) The music by Georges Delerue, who here crafts a score reminicent of late period Mozart; a haunting procession of melopheic still life and graceful sadness, it's without a doubt his finest work made for the filmmaker. 2) Nestor Almendros glorious natural photography. Almendros, along with Sven Nykvist and John Alcott, was one of his generation's giants of cinematography, and like "Days of Heaven" and Almendros' films for Eric Rohmer, the look of this one hasn't aged a day.
Truffaut fashioned the film as a sort of reverse-sequel to "Jules And Jim", which was one of his greatest successes. Based on a book by "Jim" author Henri-Pierre Roche, the film's set in an identical period (turn of the century France), and given the familiar plot (a love triange, only this time it's two women to one lucky guy). The man is Claude (Jean-Pierre Leaud, think a Franciese, intellectualized Tom Cruise), who hails from a rich boring family and spends summers as a young man in England as the company of two seemingly puritan sisters, Anne (Kika Markham) and the younger Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). Over time, Claude's parisian-boho morals infume these two women causing each in turn to fall in love with him.
Although Leuad is the movie's centerpiece, we never feel like we quite know (or care) for him. Art mingles with life when Claude writes a book called "Jerome and Julian", but I found it nowhere believable that this spoiled, distracted character was the kind of man who could pen a novel. In the end, the performance comes off as unconvincing and a wee bit vague. The same can be said of Markham's Anne. Could such an alluring but strangely very passive woman have three heated love affairs in a tiny stretch of time? Luckily, Tendeter's Muriel makes up for it. Pokerfaced with her eyes hidden behind a jet-black lense set, this stiff, implosive, reprehensibe, timid-yet-outspoken firecrotch is a salad of silent bouts and stubborn fits. And Tendeter, whose lines cross her face with freckled rebellion, fills her shoes like she's trotted this feisty woman's path quite naturally.
It helps that Tendeter is given the two greatest scenes in the film, one involving a sensual confession of female masturbation and the other a blood soaked moment when Claude busts Muriel's virginity (a discomforting image in tone with the glass-cutting scene from Bergman's "Cries and Whispers").
But those searching for a return to the whip-panning style of "Jules and Jim" will be sorely disappointed, as "Two English Girls" is more in common stylistically with Merchant Ivory, or a slower, theatrically paced later Truffaut film like "The Last Metro" (not my cup of tea by a longshot). Yet I recommend it for the blissful sound and image and for it's portrayal of a woman who, as a result of betraying her innocence, is touched by acid in the soul. Like Ullmann in "Cries and Whispers" or any of the traitorous medusic nemesi' in the films of Tarkovksy: she's a tarnished, fractured, anguished, bitter, unpleasantly human redhead.
Summary of Two English Girls (Les deux anglaises et le continent)
Fran?ois Truffaut's adept handling of language and art, sex and caprice, is in full flower in Two English Girls, an adaptation of the Henri-Pierre Roch? novel. Claude (Truffaut favorite Jean-Pierre L?aud) is a Frenchman persuaded by Ann (Kika Markham) to come to England to meet her sister, Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). Claude falls for both sisters, vacillating between the two with a kind of Bront? indecisivenes, but he ends up asking for Muriel's hand. Complications arise, forcing all three of them to separate ends but with many reunions along the way. Truffaut said he wanted to "make not a film on physical love, but a physical film on love." He teases and taunts, making pastoral scenes erotic and erotic scenes pastoral and never loses momentum or weight with the story. Largely dismissed or ignored after its release in 1971, the film has wisely been reassessed to take its place as one of Truffaut's finest. It also includes a magnificent score by Georges Delerue (who appears briefly in the film) and stands as possibly one of the last cautionary cause-and-effect tales of the evils of masturbation and poor eyesight. --Keith SimantonArt House & International DVD Video
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