Two English Girls

Claude is a young man in Paris. Through his mother he meets an English family and is invited to Wales to stay with two sisters. Anne makes sculpture; Muriel is devout and withdrawn. Claude attaches himself first to Anne and then to Muriel. The mothers intervene, a year of separation is imposed, letters go back and forth, and years pass. All three lose each other and return to each other. François Truffaut directs. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays Claude. The cinematography is by Nestor Almendros. The source is Henri-Pierre Roché's second novel. Truffaut had made Jules and Jim from the same author's first, and this counts as its counterpart: there it was two men and a woman, here one man and two women. Unlike Jules and Jim the tone is heavy and closed. There is no lightness; the narrative is built on desire postponed and what that costs. It was poorly received on release and Truffaut himself cut about twenty minutes. The full version was reassembled years later and the film now counts among his best. The use of colour and the narration build the language of a letter inside the film; Truffaut reads the text in his own voice. Who it is for: viewers who like Truffaut and French drama drawn from literature. Who it is not for: it is long, the pace is slow, and the characters obstructing themselves will make some viewers impatient.