Love on the Run
Directed by François Truffaut
Written by François Truffaut, Marie-France Pisier, Jean Aurel, and Suzanne Schiffman
1979/France
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
Liliane: You can’t make everyone else pay for your rotten childhood.
Truffaut brings his Antoine Doinel series to a most satisfying conclusion.
Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is now in his thirties and has just published his first autobiographical novel. He and wife Christine (Claude Jade) are divorcing. He is currently seeing Sabine (Dorothee) a record store clerk but is naturally commitment phobic. During the course of the film he will run into most of the women he has loved before.
This is the most meta film I can think of. Truffaut not only brings in many of the characters of his series, including in a moving scene Antoine’s stepfather, but illustrates past happenings with clips from the earlier films. And everything flows and does not come off gimmicky. Truffaut was extremely lucky in the choice of his young alter ego and Leaud maintained his high quality throughout the series (and later). And the ladies are all gorgeous. This is a comedy about the messiness of love and I highly recommend it.
