L’amour en fuite
Colette is clearly my favorite Doinel woman. I find it amusing that she calls herself an “ancienne d’Antoine Doinel” considering that she never actually had a relationship with him. Back in the day, I also thought that her way of talking was really strange, very 60s French nouvelle vague-ish, but also emotionless and cold, basically indifferent. The “new” Colette is the exact opposite of it, I think the actress does a great job portraying her character, she is something like the ideal woman, who loves but also who suffers and feels compassion even for somebody like Antoine Doinel. She was ravishing especially in the one flashback scene where Antoine meets her with her husband and child. I want the coat she wears!
I think the Doinel cycle finds an awesome ending with “L’amour en fuite”. I thought that “Les 400 Coups” was mostly unrelated to Doinel’s later life, even if Truffaut largely explains it with his mother’s affairs. Instead, I think that “Les 400 Coups” is mostly about childhood and growing up, whereas all the others are about, well, Antoine Doinel being the same egoistic, ridiculous yet likable character who never ever changes. Truffaut criticizes this character tenderly and I am a total sucker for that. Indeed, Antoine feels emotions and suffers, but much more than that he makes other suffer, because that’s just the Schnitzlerian romantic he is. It was lovely to see flashbacks of the other films, and I cannot quite decide whether I preferred this film or “Baisers volés”. I liked “Baisers volés” for its lightness, its witty dialogue and its nouvelle vague style (oh God so stylish!), but “L’amour en fuite” has the complexity I have been looking for. Just because Antoine has proven to be unable to keep his relationships, the film is far from being a mere amalgam of the previous stories, trying to tie them together; instead, the film ambitiously portrays several of his relationships, past and present, at the same time – successfully so, in my opinion. The movie ends on quite a happy note, with the notion that love is worth it, despite all the suffering and injustice.
One thing I absolutely love about the two only nouvelle vague directors I have seen (Godard and Truffaut, whom I also obsess about) is their subtle humor, and the fact that their movies have these little scenes, like Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo striking poses, or Jean Seberg selling newspapers, or Anna Karina and whats-his-name insulting each other by displaying parts of book titles to each other, Anna Karina and the two boys dancing in the café, or literally any scene of Jules, Jim and Catherine together. “L’amour en futile” has such a scene as well, I think, namely Antoine Doinel at the train station with his son, sending him to some music camp:
– Be good and study your instrument. If you study well, you can become a musician.
– So papa, what if I don’t study well?
– Then you only become a music critic.
That totally cracked me up!
Truffaut is typically considered the nouvelle vague director who loved women, but is that really the case? With Antoine Doinel, the true enemy of all women, I am not so sure. And yet I cannot help but love the Doinel cycle.