Even at the full length that its director intended, this movie strains to convey the complications of story development and motivation that presumably make up the novel on which it is based. The voice-overs (by Truffaut himself) are an attempt to fill in the blanks, but they are rushed and in some cases seem like substitutes for what should have been rendered dramatically.
Nevertheless "Two English Girls" offers some of the satisfactions of a good novel, searching out the motivations of Anne, Muriel, and Claude, showing the shifting interactions of these people over time, and in the end leaving us with a sense of the inexorable passage of time and regret for what could have been.
What could have been is the fulfillment of love. The story tells how, time and again, love is thwarted or suppressed--by Anne's feeling of inferiority in comparison with her sister, by Muriel's secret puritan guilt, by Claude's self absorption, and by his interfering mother.
Another weakness of the movie is the portrayal of Claude by Jean-Pierre Leaud. Given what should have been a profoundly moving story, he is surprisingly inexpressive, and in appearance he could be any young man walking down a street in Paris today--not the Paris of 1900.
One of the great strengths of the movie is the wonderful cinematography by Nestor Almendros, including interior shots of the girls' house in "Wales," the panoramas of the landscape in Normandy (which was intended to stand in for Wales), the view of the retreating land from a moving train, and the tracking shot of Anne moving through the forest as seen from a lake in Switzerland.
All in all, a very good movie. I am grateful to Turner Classic Movies for the opportunity to see it.
Nevertheless "Two English Girls" offers some of the satisfactions of a good novel, searching out the motivations of Anne, Muriel, and Claude, showing the shifting interactions of these people over time, and in the end leaving us with a sense of the inexorable passage of time and regret for what could have been.
What could have been is the fulfillment of love. The story tells how, time and again, love is thwarted or suppressed--by Anne's feeling of inferiority in comparison with her sister, by Muriel's secret puritan guilt, by Claude's self absorption, and by his interfering mother.
Another weakness of the movie is the portrayal of Claude by Jean-Pierre Leaud. Given what should have been a profoundly moving story, he is surprisingly inexpressive, and in appearance he could be any young man walking down a street in Paris today--not the Paris of 1900.
One of the great strengths of the movie is the wonderful cinematography by Nestor Almendros, including interior shots of the girls' house in "Wales," the panoramas of the landscape in Normandy (which was intended to stand in for Wales), the view of the retreating land from a moving train, and the tracking shot of Anne moving through the forest as seen from a lake in Switzerland.
All in all, a very good movie. I am grateful to Turner Classic Movies for the opportunity to see it.