Well, I just finished watching Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls and now I feel myself coming down with an intense case of sarcasm. It's a good thing for Mr. Truffaut, for example, that there wasn't a Third Wave of caustic film critics at Cahier du Cinema on the heels of his New Wave cabal since he ultimately turned into the same kind of director that he had himself so liberally lambasted when he was a critic, producing films that were highly stylized, lacking in currency, lacking pace or energy, and adapting stuffy novels.

Equally tempting would be some arrows of sarcasm aimed in the direction of the critics and comment writers who believe this film is about love. My suggestion, to female readers in particular, is that before you say yes to that proposal of marriage you just received, watch Two English Girls with the prospect and if he believes it to be about "love", dump him fast and hard. This is a film about desire, not love.

Then there's the film's clever use of voiceover narrative, apparently designed to allow you to read your mail while the films playing. It tells you, in most instances, what you've just seen on the screen – or not seen because you were doing something else. Claude, the main character, sits down for dinner with the family whom he is visiting in Wales – mother and two daughters, Ann and Muriel. Muriel's chair, however, is empty. Not to worry – if you're an especially slow viewer – the narrator is about to inform you that Muriel is missing. When the narrator (Truffaut himself) is not filling you in on what you didn't notice because you were half asleep, he tells you what the characters are feeling and thinking – especially Claude. This is highly effective because Jean-Pierre Léaud, who at least showed up for some of his other film roles, plays his part as a passionate Frenchman with such expressionless woodenness, viewers would have no other way of knowing what he is thinking or feeling.

As if that weren't enough reason to cherish this film, we do ultimately get to the . . . er . . . climax scene where it is revealed that Muriel is not, in fact, as pure and chaste as she has led Claude and us to believe! During her childhood, we learn, she [oh, horror!!] masturbated repeatedly! How shocking! The harlot! The tramp! The strumpet! The scarlet woman! Now, at last, we can all understand the depth of her self-loathing and ambivalence about love.

Historical Background: Two English Girls was Truffaut's second film based on a novel by author Henri-Pierre Roché, an art collector who didn't get around to writing his first novel until he was seventy-four. Nine years earlier, Truffaut had quite successfully adapted Roché's first novel Jules and Jim (1962). When Truffaut made that film, only his third, he was then at the height of his New Wave phase, which featured experimental filming techniques such as the famed jump-cuts. By 1971, the New Wave no longer retained either its cohesiveness or earlier charm. Truffaut and Godard, the two bulwarks of the movement, had fallen out, Godard becoming increasingly experimental and committed to the counterculture and leftwing politics while Truffaut was steadily moving toward the kind of mainstream films that he had so ardently lambasted as a critic. Truffaut's two films based on Roché novels do share one thing in common: both are about unusual romantic triangles. In Jules and Jim, the two title characters, who are best friends, are each in love, at various times, with the same woman. In Two English Girls, Claude desires (I can't say "loves"), each of two sisters, at various times. Unfortunately, the similarities pretty much end with the triangles. Two English Girls lacks the depth of character portrayal, superb performances, or stylistic quality of the earlier film.

The Story: Claude Roc (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is something of a momma's boy, living in Paris with his widowed mother, Madam Roc (Marie Mansart). His mother asks him to meet and help entertain Ann Brown (Kika Markham), an English girl, daughter of Madam Roc's old friend, Mrs. Brown (Sylvia Marriott), who lives in Wales, England. Claude is currently sporting a cane because of a knee injury suffered in a fall from a swing set. That doesn't prevent Ann, an aspiring sculptor, and Claude from enjoying one another's company as they check out the sights of Paris, including the Rodin Museum. Ann invites Claude to stay with her family in Wales and, with the blessing of both mothers, Claude accepts.

Though Ann is attracted to Claude, she is more inclined to throw him into the path of her demure and somewhat frail sister, Muriel (Stacey Tendeter), thinking that they'd make an ideal match. Claude and the two sisters become inseparable throughout the summer, lounging about the English gardens and lawns and playing tennis. Claude dotes on both sisters in equal measure and, thus far, the relationships remain Platonic. Claude says, during one of their outings, as he shifts positions, "I'd rather not be between you. I like to be able to look at you two at the same time."

This arrangement might have continued indefinitely, especially because Claude seems not to know his own mind or to be capable of setting a direction or feeling preference on his own. He's like a piece of fluff on the breeze. It's Mrs. Brown who moves things forward by suggesting that he must move into a neighbor's house so as to avoid any hint of impropriety as we courts Muriel. Until that moment, Claude has no thought of courting Muriel, but, now that the idea has been brought up, he finds himself suddenly, madly, in love with her!

Muriel is, at first, adamant in her refusal of him, invoking not only the painful "No" word, but even a devastating "Never." Later, she withdraws the "Never" and Claude gleefully writes to his mother. Madame Roc is not too delighted with this new prospect. "You were pushed into this marriage. You wouldn't have thought of it." She worries about Muriel's frailty in combination with her son's indecisiveness, and, more likely, feels unwilling to share her son through marriage with a young woman. Mrs. Brown, on the other hand, wants the matter settled quickly. By the intervention of a negotiator, Mr. Flint (Mark Peterson), the mothers agree that Muriel and Claude should be separated for one year but, if after a year they still want to marry, neither family will present any obstacle thereafter.

Madame Roc knows her son well. No sooner is he back in Paris then his attention is drawn to the first shapely figure he encounters – Ruta (Irène Tunc), a fashion photographer and erstwhile nude model in an adjacent apartment. He has other affairs as well and breaks off the engagement to Muriel. Out of sight, out of mind. Back in Wales, Muriel struggles to deal with the rejection. By her Puritan ideal, she had given herself to Claude irrevocably for life and his ending the relationship simply causes her to become fully obsessed with him. She slides helplessly through multiple stages in her grief.

Ann returns to Paris again and she and Claude have soon begun a love affair – without commitment. Each is free to pursue other relationships. Claude does but initially Ann doesn't, it not being particularly compatible with her nature. Then she meets Diurka (Philippe Léotard), a brawny Slav (as the subtitle states), and is soon keeping two lovers happy, though on separate occasions. Ann goes off to Persia with Diurka, leaving Claude temporarily miserable.

SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP TO THEMES IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE FILM.

Later, Ann returns to Paris without Diurka, who she has left in Persia. She and Claude strike up their relationship again. Muriel comes to Paris for a visit and, once again, Ann throws Claude and Muriel together. Claude is again instantly desirous of her and this time Muriel is ready to surrender her virginity to Claude, despite her religious reservations. After the deflowering, Claude asks her to marry him, but she refuses.

Ann returns to Wales, is briefly engaged to a man, but breaks off the engagement when she discovers that she is dying of tuberculosis. Muriel marries a schoolteacher and has a daughter. Fifteen years pass and Claude visits England. All that is left for him is to wander alone through the same English gardens and lawns that he had once shared with the two English sisters.

Themes: In psychology, human and animal behaviors are sometimes categorized according to such terms as (1) appetitive or drive-mediated, (2) avoidance, (3) stimulus-driven, and (4) goal-directed. The first two categories needn't concern us particularly for this discussion other than to note that "physical love" (i.e., sex), which Truffaut acknowledges to be the principal subject matter of Two English Girls, is motivated by sex drive, or libido. The main issue, in understanding Claude's psychology, is the difference between stimulus-driven and goal-directed behavior. When we go out and buy a new outfit to wear in order to make a good impression at some event that is important to us, that's an example of goal-directed behavior. When, on the other hand, we spot an article of clothing in the display window of a store and stop in to purchase it without having had any prior need for such an item, that's stimulus-driven behavior. When we plan a diet and a meal menu, that's goal-directed behavior. When we nibble on some tasty looking appetizer or snack food that's been set out in front of us because seeing it makes us hungry, that's stimulus-driven behavior. Advertising of consumer goods is pretty much predicated on the notion of stimulus-driven behavior.

Claude is a person whose behavior is almost entirely stimulus-driven. Whichever woman happens to be in front of him at any given moment is the one that he desires, he believes, more than any other he has ever known. He meets Ann in Paris and takes a liking to her. Muriel is placed in front of him in Wales, and she's suddenly his life's desire. Back in Paris without Muriel for a year, he she's a nude painting of Ruta and suggests that they have dinner that night, followed, of course, by the proverbial nightcap. Ann returns to Paris, and it occurs to him that she is the one he's desired all along. Muriel comes to visit Ann, and he instantly desires her. Claude pretty well sums himself up when he states, at one point, "I don't know what I think or want." Without a core of goals and values, there can be no goal-directed behavior. Claude is readily manipulated by the simple expedient of placing something desirable in his line of vision. Whichever feminine form is standing in front of him is the only one on his mind.

Desiring someone simply because he or she is there, and has been seen or touched, is "desire" but not "love." Love requires genuine concern for the other person and their needs. Love requires commitment in order to ensure some continuity in ability to care for that person and to serve his or her needs. Muriel ultimately understood Claude's inability to love genuinely. She gave him her virginity to satisfy his need and to relieve herself of one of her own liabilities, but had the good sense to refuse to marry him. It's hard to care much about Claude as a person. He's shallow, selfish, and fundamentally incapable of love. It's also hard to see why either of the two sisters would be attracted to him. One reviewer suggests that this film deals with the "messy reality of actual relationships." In fact, it deals with the messy reality of a man incapable of real relationships. Muriel has her own limitations – deriving from the excess of Victorian Puritanism to which she's been exposed, culminating in exaggerated guilt about sexuality. Ann, of the three lead characters, had the most potential for a fulfilling marriage relationship, until the tuberculosis comes along.

Truffaut himself had been involved with a famous pair of French sisters and actresses – Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac. The latter died tragically in an automobile accident in 1967 and Truffaut's relationship with the other sister ended in 1970, just before he began making Two English Sisters. Trauffaut had experienced such extreme depression that he had spent time in a psychiatric clinic. It's perhaps telling that the two main changes that he engineered in adapting the novel to the screen were both ones that made the story even bleaker. He added the business about Claude publishing Muriel's diary over her objections as well as Ann's death from tuberculosis. Truffaut himself maintained that the idea for the death of Ann was inspired by the death of one of the Bronté sisters in 1848 from consumption, but it's just as likely to reflect the death of Françoise Dorléac.

Production Values: I give the film high marks in a few respects. It is a beautifully shot film, featuring muted, pastel hues and gorgeous English countryside interspersed with Parisian ambiance. There's a nifty "iris effect" used to close several of the scenes, by which the visible screen shrinks in concentric circles to highlight the person at the center of the image. There's a pleasant low-key, dreamlike flow to the story.

Unfortunately, those pluses are overwhelmed by negative qualities. There's way too much voiceover narration, almost to the point of giving the film the feel of a slide slow companion to a book reading. Furthermore, it's the worst kind of narration – the kind that is provided in lieu of advancing the story or revealing interior feelings through skillful editing, strong acting, and intelligent scriptwriting.

The two lead ladies, Kira Markham and Stacey Tendeter, were inexperienced when this film was made and neither had previous or future credits in other top-quality films. Nevertheless, they more than held their own against Léaud's disappointing performance. I've seen him, now, I believe, in ten films. Of the ones I recall him in (excluding is very youthful role in The 400 Blows), he delivers pretty much the same performance in all of them. In other words, he strikes me as an actor with very little range who is mostly just playing himself. When he's successful (e.g., in The Mother and the Whore and Masculine-Feminine), it's because the part matches what he can deliver rather than him matching what the part requires. In Two English Girls, he, more than anything else, is the downfall of the film.

Bottom-Line: Two English Girls was a critical and box-office failure when it was released in 1971, but has gained ground with critics in recent years. In my humble opinion, the people and critics got it right in 1971 and the reevaluation is misguided. Two English Girls is in French and English with English subtitles for the French portions. It has an interminable running time of 130 minutes. The Fox Lorber DVD extras include filmographies, a list of awards, and a vintage Truffaut trailer collection. The film is rated R.

Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age