127 - Love on the Run, 1979, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

127 - Love on the Run, 1979, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.

You can't just do anything at all and then say "forgive me."  You haven't changed at all.  You're as self-centered as ever.

You haven't changed at all.

That is Colette's statement to Antoine.

Wait.

Colette?

This is not Antoine and Colette.  This is Love On the Run.

He dated Colette years ago.  Since then he married Christine.

Why is he talking to Colette?

Where is Christine?

Funny you should ask.

Antoine and Christine just got divorced.

Yesterday.

Today he is already on a train with Colette.

But he woke up yesterday with Sabine.

Who?

What is going on here?

No.  He has not changed at all.

And Truffaut admitted it.

And Truffaut retired the series after this one.

Love On the Run has many of the ingredients that make the entire Antoine Doinel series so enjoyable.  Antoine's personality.  The women in his life.  Relationships.  High energy.  Human foibles.  Supporting characters.

And the series serves as a prototype for what Richard Linklater did with Boyhood.

When Linklater came out with Boyhood, it was a revelation.  To follow a real actor as he grows up and create a fictional character who grows up with him.

It had never been done before!

Except that it had.

By Francois Truffaut.  With the Antoine Doinel series.  Only with five movies rather than one.

And if you look around, you may find other examples.

This is not to diminish Linklater's extraordinary accomplishment.  What he and his team did together was fantastic.

It is to praise Truffaut for accomplishing something similarly impressive.

It is just too bad that he punted with his final film.  The series was really starting to go somewhere.  And it could have continued if only he had let Antoine grow up.

And not resorted to too many flashbacks.

If you have ever seen the final episode of Seinfeld, then we hope you have learned your lesson.  Do not ever end a series by merely retelling the series in flashbacks.

Creators have a social contract with their audience.  They have an obligation to deliver the goods.  Seinfeld broke that contract by not doing the hard work of writing new material but by falling back on flashbacks.

If they had watched this series, they would have already known not to do that.

Lost also broke the contract in many ways.  One of them was to pair up the wrong people with the wrong people.  Love On the Run makes that mistake as well.

When creators try too hard to trick their audience into not guessing the ending, they sometimes veer away from narrative logic.  Then good luck with the results.

In this series there are multiple options that could have satisfied narrative logic.

Antoine could have ended up with Christine.

In fact, you the viewer may be pulling for Antoine to reconcile with Christine.  That is logical.  Then he would change.  He would grow.  He would finally grow up.

Antoine could have ended up with Colette.

You the viewer may be pulling that, for him to get back with his first love.  That is also logical.  Then he would also have changed.  He would have learned and matured and now returned to his childhood sweetheart not as a boy but as man.

Truffaut throws in another wrench.  Liliane shows up!

From Day for Night.  Where Jean-Pierre Leaud had played a completely different character, Alphonse, the name of his son in this series.  Truffaut even throws in footage from Day for Night here, expecting us to willingly suspend our disbelief and believe it matches this story.

It is fun at first but then grows confusing.

Now it begins to feel like that Frasier episode where every woman from Frasier's past shows up all at once.  It could be a great concept if it is well executed, but it is riding a fine line of falling into self-indulgence.

In this case, we do not end with the women.  Truffaut brings a man back as well.  Antoine's mother's lover.  M. Lucien.  The one Antoine saw on the street in The 400 Blows.  He returns and explains things to Antoine.

Your mother loved you, son.  She had a strange way of showing it, but she loved you.

We do not quite know if this provides comfort or resolution to Antoine or not.

Truffaut himself admitted on television that he was not happy with the way this film turned out.  Specifically because he did not allow Antoine Doinel to grow or change.  So, according to Truffaut, he became like a cartoon character.  Always the same.

It is interesting that Colette delivers this line--You haven't changed at all--during an argument on a train.

It is precisely at this moment when you feel that the story is filled with possibility.  Christine or Colette.  Growth.  Maturity.  Understanding.

But right after she says it, he pulls the emergency handle to stop the train, and he jumps off and goes running.

Immediately, the viewer is disappointed.  What was Truffaut thinking?  This story was about to go somewhere.  It had possibility!  It had options!  And you just squelched them and threw the whole thing away.

Truffaut owes an apology to the actresses who played Christine and Colette.  He just wasted their characters, their storylines, and their talents.  How ironic, then, that the actress who played Colette, Marie-France Pisier, contributed to the story.  She did not protect her own character.  The fact that she is a lawyer is wasted.  The fact that she buys Antoine's book and invests her time and emotions into reading it is wasted.  The fact that Antoine goes to the trouble to jump a train to be with her is wasted.  The fact that they begin to recount old times and put the pieces together is wasted.  Oh, let's just make her a prostitute and have him jump off the train because they have an argument over nothing.  Nothing!  He falls off the bunk and lands on her lawyer clothes.  And she dumps him and they end everything over that?  Really?

And no one is going to believe or cheer for any relationship with Sabine.  A completely new person who is not part of the story line.  It makes absolutely no sense.

If we are to believe he will "end up" with her, then we must, according to narrative logic and character logic, believe that it will last for awhile and he will be on his own again, forever trapped in a cycle of immature stupidity.

And the moment on the train becomes a metaphor for the ending of the series.

The story of Antoine Doinel has derailed.