Two for the Road Movie Review
True confession: I was no great admirer of Audrey Hepburn's unreal screen image throughout the ‘50s and most of the ‘60s. Born into quasi-royalty, she was, for a time, everyone's idea of a fairy princess, forever teaming up with male stars who were old enough to be her dad or even granddad, admittedly starving herself to remain 35 pounds underweight as a Givenchy mannequin her entire adult life, and always, always, in need of physical and emotional protection from a guy, any guy. And then, Hepburn got a chance to play women who could eat food and take care of themselves, in Wait Until Dark and Two for the Road. She won her fifth Oscar nomination for Dark, and she got to call her husband a bastard in Road. Stranger things were happening in 1967, but for Hepburn, who even gave up her Givenchy wardrobe to make the film, there was really nothing a 38-year-old symbol of frailty could do after two such groundbreaking performances but retire and so she did. Stanley Donen's Two for the Road is the story of a marriage, seen in a series of brilliantly edited flashbacks. The flashbacks are not seen in a linear fashion, but here, there, and everywhere, as a real married couple would review their life together. Mark Wallace is played by the wonderfully appealing Albert Finney, then 31, just seven years younger than Hepburn, a minor age gap dissolved by their great chemistry together. For once, Hepburn is in a relationship that has, thanks to Frederic Raphael's superb screenplay, some basis in reality. In the present, they bicker, but then we return to their far-from-romantic meeting and they bicker then, too. Mark doesn't want her at first, anyway—he wants Jacqueline Bisset, then 23, but Jackie gets the measles, so he's stuck with Joanna (Hepburn). Somehow, they manage to have an idyllic day at the beach, with passion-killing sunburn as the capper. Flash forward, flash back—we see problems at every stage of their marriage: to marry or not to marry, other women, other men, money, no money, another couple's child, their own child, and on and on. Underneath the waves of hostility are wit, humor, and a strong sense that these two belong together, and that no one else in their lives creates the sort of sparks that they do together. The romance in Two for the Road is intensified by the fact that the couple's feelings for each other are often rough and tangled, and always visceral. Two for the Road, featuring the once-in-a-lifetime magic created by Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, also stars the very funny Eleanor Bron, 33, and William Daniels, 40, as Cathy and Howard Manchester, the parents of an obnoxious brat named Ruthie, the most persuasive argument ever for adult holidays in France without the kiddies!
1967 112m/C GB Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron, William Daniels, Claude Dauphin, Nadia Gray, Jacqueline Bisset, Georges Descrieres, Gabrielle Middleton, Judy Cornwell, Irene Hilda, Roger Dann, Libby Morris, Yves Barsac; D: Stanley Donen; W: Frederic Raphael; C: Christopher Challis; M: Henry Mancini. Nominations: Academy Awards ‘67: Best Story & Screenplay. VHS, LV, Letterbox