Two in the Wave is the story of a friendship. Jean-Luc Godard was born in 1930; François Truffaut two years later. Love of movies brings them together. They write in the same magazines, Cahiers du Cinéma and Arts. When the younger of the two becomes a filmmaker with The 400 Blows, which triumphs in Cannes in 1959, he helps his older friend shift to directing, offering him a screenplay which already has a title, À bout de souffle, or Breathless. Through the 1960s the two loyally support each other. History and politics separate them in 1968, when Godard plunges into radical politics but Truffaut continues his career as before. Between the two of them, the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud is torn like a child caught between two separated and warring parents. Their friendship and their break-up embody the story of French cinema. –IMDb
A bit biased towards Truffaut, and lacking footage from any of Godard's post-68 films except the Criterionized TOUT VA BIEN, but invaluable as a document of the cinematic equivalent of punk rock. My favorite part was the Leaud montage at the end, where the narrator talks about how the two auteurs fought over him like a child in a nasty divorce.
I am quite fascinated with the relationship between Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. I have read their exchange of letters when they drifted apart and it seems that there really is so much more behind their dispute. I would very much like to see this film, but I get the impression that the documentary does not go much deeper about their fall-out beyond that said letter exchange. So, is the film superficial?
The film explains a lot about the relationship between JLG and FT, without whom there would've been a very different and possibly less-influential New Wave movement. Both of them start through Cahiers du Cinema; eventually they both wearied of their connection to the new wave. As to the charges of T's "selling out," it's a quarrel that, 30 years after his death, means very little, both artists live on in their films
“The drive went into the filmmaking, in an effort to render an image of that fleeting apparition known as human experience.”
"An anniversary present for the new wave — tied to the upcoming 50th-birthday screenings of Breathless — Two in the Wave gives the gift
