Two English Girls (1972)

Editor's Note A neverending visual feast of strikingly beautiful images--from a stone château looking over the ocean in the English countryside to the grand art ateliers and beautifully decorated parlors of Paris--François Truffaut's TWO ENGLISH GIRLS is the story of the lovely Anne (Kika Markham) and her intriguing little sister, Muriel (Stacey Tendeter), who invite their Parisian friend Claude (Jean-Pierre Léaud) to spend one summer with them in England and then spend the rest of their lives wrapped up in their changing relationships with him. That first summer, while painting canvases by the sea, playing lawn tennis, having lively games of charades in front of a majestic fireplace, the threesome becomes quite close. Despite Muriel's weak emotional and physical health (including damaged eyes that cause her to sometimes wear a macabre bandage across her face) and Anne's overprotectiveness, the banal scenario becomes rather interesting as the randy trio becomes more and more engrossed in their romantic games, leading to numerous turns in the story. An analytic narrator keeps the action on track, while the majority of the tale is told in voice-overs by the characters, who are constantly writing personal letters to each other or pouring their hearts out in their diaries. The narrative style of TWO ENGLISH GIRLS follows the traditional format of a Jane Austen period piece, while its emotionally complex story line, symbolically loaded cinematography, and attention to famous works of art--especially Rodin--give it an intellectual sophistication and a seductive sheen. Like the similarly themed JULES ET JIM, Truffaut's film is once again based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché.

	Marie Mansart
	Stacey Tendeter
	Sylvia Marriott
	Jean-Pierre Léaud
	Kika Markham
	Georges Delerue - Composer
	François Truffaut - Director

TWO ENGLISH GIRLS is François Truffaut's richly romantic and highly Victorian tale of Claude, a young and pampered Frenchman who travels to Wales for an extended stay with his mother's friend and her two daughters. A long-term, complex, and emotionally repressed relationship begins between Claude and the sisters in which desire is more often frustrated than fulfilled, love is more often tinged with nostalgic sadness than with joy, and life is more often mediated through literature and art than truly experienced.