Two English Girls
| Two English Girls | |
|---|---|
French release poster
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| Directed by | François Truffaut |
| Produced by | Marcel Berbert |
| Written by | François Truffaut Jean Gruault |
| Based on |
Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent by Henri-Pierre Roché |
| Starring |
Jean-Pierre Léaud Kika Markham Stacey Tendeter Sylvia Marriott Marie Mansart |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Néstor Almendros |
| Edited by | Yann Dedet |
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Production
company |
Les Films du Carrosse
CinéTel |
| Distributed by | Valoria Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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116 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French English |
| Box office | 412,866 admissions (France) |
Two English Girls (original French title: Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent, UK Title: Anne and Muriel), is a 1971 French romantic drama film directed by François Truffaut and adapted from a 1956 novel of the same name by Henri-Pierre Roché. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Claude, Kika Markham as Anne, and Stacey Tendeter as Muriel. Truffaut restored 20 minutes of footage, which fills out the characters, before his death in 1984.
The novel was first published in English in 2004, translated by Walter Bruno and published by Cambridge Book Review Press, Cambridge, Wisconsin.
The film begins in Paris around the year 1902 when Claude Roc and his widowed mother are visited by Ann Brown, daughter of an old friend. Ann invites Claude to spend the summer on the coast of Wales with her widowed mother and sister Muriel. While she enjoys Claude's company, her hope is that he may be a husband for her introverted sister. In the event, Claude and Muriel do start to fall in love and Mrs Brown, with the agreement of Madame Roc, says they must live apart for a year.
Returning to France, Claude moves in artistic circles and meets many attractive women while Muriel gets increasingly despondent in Wales. Ann leaves home to study art in Paris, where she falls into an affair with Claude, only to leave him for Diurka, a dashing publisher who takes her off to Persia. When Muriel is told of the affair, she collapses into deep depression. Ann falls ill and returns to Wales, dying among her family with Diurka at her side.
Diurka tells Claude that Muriel is leaving home to take a job in Belgium. Claude meets her ship at Calais and they spend that night together in a hotel. In the morning she says they must now part for ever. Later she writes to say she is pregnant, raising Claude's hopes of marriage, but a second letter says she has miscarried and their relationship is truly at an end.
In an epilogue set in the 1920s, the unmarried and orphaned Claude, now a successful author, still dreams of the artistic gifts of Ann and the children Muriel might have had.
The film received generally positive reviews; it currently holds an 86% 'fresh' rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.
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Wikipedia