Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent [Anne and Muriel] **** (1971, Kika Markham, Stacey Tendeter, Jean-Pierre Léaud) – Classic Movie Review 3014

François Truffaut’s tantalising period romantic drama finds him returning to the love triangle theme he earlier profitably mined in Jules et Jim (1963) and La Peau Douce (1964). It tells the story of a French writer who falls in love with two English sisters during a Welsh seaside holiday at the beginning of the last century.

Kika Markham and Stacey Tendeter star as Anne and Muriel, Les Deux Anglaises, while Truffaut uses his regular alter ego in the semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel saga, Jean-Pierre Léaud, in a different role as Claude Roc, the young middle-class Frenchman who first meets young Englishwoman Anne Brown in Paris.

Anne invites Claude to come to the house where she lives with her mother (Sylvia Marriott) and her sister Muriel, whom she intends for Claude. The three become close and Claude gradually falls in love with Muriel. But the family insist on a one-year separation before agreeing to the marriage and Claude returns to Paris.

The director revisits Jules et Jim’s theme and writer (Henri-Pierre Roché) to less effect, but this is still charming, diverting, appropriately literary entertainment. There is real passion here among the self-obsessed concern about feelings, and the film sharply captures the pent-up flavour of the era without indulging in nostalgia.

The look and sound of it are immense assets as there is a poignant score by Georges Delerue and gorgeous faded Eastmancolor cinematography from a master director of photography, Nestor Almendros. However, despite all the distinguished work, it frustratingly turned out to be not one of Truffaut’s more popular films.

Also in the cast are Marie Mansart, Philippe Léotard, Irène Tunch, Marie Mansard, Mark Peterson, David Markham and Georges Delerue as Claude’s Business Agent.

It was originally cut for Britain and American release. Originally 132 minutes (director’s cut) and cut by the French distributor to 116 minutes and 108 minutes.

Truffaut writes the screenplay with Jean Gruault, who died on June 8 2015, aged 90. He wrote 25 screenplays between 1960 and 1995. His screenplay for Alain Renais’s Mon oncle d’Amérique (1980) was nominated for an Oscar and a César and won a David di Donatello Award. Other notable works include Jules and Jim (1962), co-written with François Truffaut, as well as Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970), Anne and Muriel (1971) and The Green Room (1978).

He also contributed to Jacques Rivette’s debut feature, Paris Belongs to Us (1960), and Rivette’s The Nun (1966); Roberto Rossellini’s Vanina Vanini (1961) and The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966); Jean-Luc Godard’s Les carabiniers (1963); Chantal Akerman’s The Eighties (1983) and Golden Eighties (1986); and the scenario for Resnais’s Love Unto Death (1984).

Classic Movie Review 3014