Love on the Run (Francois Truffaut, 1979)

I love Antoine Doinel. Really. I love him as if he was a real person, one that I know and have shared my life with. It's not as pathetic as it sounds, I hope, but watching Love on the Run was both a happy and sad experience on my part. It was another chapter in the Doinel saga, but it was the end. This movie is a strange ending to Doinel's story; it's part clip show of the series' greatest hits, part wrapup of Antoine's women troubles. The strangest thing about the movie is that, despite Truffaut's protestations to the contrary, it works. It's a fitting ending to one of the greatest series in film history. When the film begins, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud, without whom the Doinel films would not have been even half as good as they were, he truly was made for the part, not only because Truffaut wrote the films after 400 Blows for him) and Christine (Claude Jade, who is not in this film nearly enough) are getting a divorce, something that I really hoped would not happen, that some magical thing would happen to get those two back together. But it doesn't. Antoine is with Sabine (played by French children's television host Dorothee), and, as always, he is on the verge of cheating and losing her. Along the way, he reconnects with Colette, who he was in love with at twenty, who is now a lawyer and having a moral crisis over whether or not to defend a man accused of killing his stepson. Sabine and Colette's boyfriend may or may not be married/divorced (one of my major problems of the film is the lack of resolution in this subplot), and Antoine is writing a new novel, one based on the adorable story of how he came to be with Sabine. There is no real plot, it is more of a character study of these three people (Antoine, Colette, and Sabine), and a realization of Antoine's women troubles throughout his life. The ending is artificially happy, and there's not nearly enough Christine in the film, but the experimental way in which Truffaut includes clips from all the previous Doinel films really works, even though Truffaut himself said it didn't. It's sort of like a clip show from your favorite series, but when it's something like Antoine Doinel's life adventures, you enjoy the trip back. A worthy entry in the series, although nothing like Stolen Kisses or Bed and Board. And it made me realize that I really need this, for both the films and the excellent Criterion special features (the best of any dvd set I've seen!). 8/10

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