L’Amour a Vingt Ans [Love at 20] **** (1962, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, Patrick Auffay) – Classic Movie Review 3020

Five directors from around the world present their different perspectives on what love is like at the age of 20 in a 1962 omnibus anthology of separate episodes united by their theme, the score of Georges Delerue and the still photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Most notably, François Truffaut writes and directs the segment Antoine et Colette, which forms the essential second instalment of his semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel saga begun three years earlier with Les Quatres Cents Coups. Jean-Pierre Léaud is again charming and sympathetic as Antoine while Marie-France Pisier is ideal as Colette, the girl he falls for, whose parents become adoptive relatives for him while she doesn’t return his love.

Renzo Rossellini’s episode concerns an abandoned mistress. Shintarô Ishihara’s tale is one about an obsessive love. Marcel Ophüls’s’ story focuses on a pregnant woman trying to plot against the baby’s father. Andrzej Wajda (segment Warsaw) presents a confusing relationship between people from different generations (writer Jerzy Stefan Stawinski).

Classic Movie Review 3020