Critics reviews

With its mood of romantic despair, Les Deux Anglaises may or may not be "the most vibrant and feverish film" (9) that Truffaut ever made. Yet it sets the tone for much of the "post-1968" cinema of the 70s and beyond. As a study of youthful idealism gone sour, it is as wrenchingly painful as La Maman et la putain/The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973) and Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975).

It turns out to be the severest and most minimal of the director's works, almost an anti-Jules et Jim in its withdrawal of empathy from the characters, its clipped style, and its refusal to charm (especially in the direction of Jean-Pierre Léaud – whose posturing, alienated mannerisms are matched at every turn by the equally stylized and nutty gestures of Stacey Tendeter).

The importance of Two English Girls lies in its sheer vitality. The film is an extraordinary cinematic conjuring trick in which Truffaut draws the viewer both physically and visually into his own personal pleasures. He does this on a multitude of levels—if the pastoral scenes salute the work of Jean Renoir, then the washed pastel colors of Nestor Almendros' Impressionist-influenced cinematography perfectly evoke Truffaut's delight in the paintings of Renoir's father, Auguste.

Francois Truffaut returned to the world of Jules and Jim to fashion this bittersweet tale of love imperfectly expressed and passion unwisely spent (1971). Here Truffaut has shed his boyish innocence and taken on a mood of calm, mature resignation; the gap between character and setting that often shows up in his films has been masterfully closed.

I watched "Two English Girls" for the longest time with a protective feeling toward its frailties, and with a reawakened loyalty to Truffaut. But then near the end when Leaud and Trufaut circle around Rodin's "The Kiss," I found myself more moved than I had ever been by any other Truffaut movie, perhaps by the rigor of a romanticism that has found a new depth in its despair, a depth so deep that the sympathetic spectator may find it a little difficult to breathe.