TWO ENGLISH GIRLS Movie Review

Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent Anne and Muriel

Anne and Muriel (Kika Markham and Stacey Tendeter) are turn-of-the-century English sisters who become acquainted with Claude (Jean-Pierre Léaud) after Anne meets him on a study trip to Paris. Over the next seven years and beyond, the complex relationship between the three—in which love, friendship, pride, and regret play equal parts—will bind them together in unpredictable, heartbreakingly poignant ways. François Truffaut's completely lovely Two English Girls is based on the only other novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, the author of Jules and Jim. It marked a bold, deeply passionate, profoundly dark departure for the director, and its piercingly pure romanticism is so uncompromising that a first viewing can be dizzying and nearly disorienting. That same form of intense, risky, romantic purity would infuse some of Truffaut's subsequent films, most notably The Story of Adele H. and The Woman Next Door. But the bittersweet, tender Two English Girls is an original, elegant achievement, unique among Truffaut's films. The broodingly beautiful cinematography is by Nestor Almendros, and the musical score is one of Georges Delerue's most haunting and inspired. Originally shortened for its American release, it was fully restored in the 1980s. (Few movies have been known by as many names; the original title of the film—and novel—is Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent, but in much of the world, including England, it was called Anne and Muriel.)

NEXT STOP … Jules and Jim, The Story of Adele H., The Age of Innocence

1972 (R) 108m/C FR Jean-Pierre Leaud, Kika Markham, Stacey Tendeter, Sylvia Marriott, Marie Mansert, Philippe Leotard; D:#lb Francois Truffaut; W: Francois Truffaut; C: Nestor Almendros; M: Georges Delerue. VHS, LV HMV, FOX