A mildly moving, inoffensive Truffaut movie about a young French bloke (played by Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Léaud, far more remarkable in movies such as Les Quatrecent Coups) who in turn romances two English (or rather, Welsh!) sisters, set during the first decade of the 20th century. It's a French movie and features a love triangle, so that for a start could have turned it into a potentially unoriginal and cliché-ridden affair. Yet the main problem I had with it wasn't so much the well-treaded theme of the love triangle, as the voice-over which somehow gave the feeling the narrative was rather weak (and I suspect it was). The characters of the two sisters, especially the older sister, were surprisingly better drawn than the male lead's (or maybe it just had something to do with the fact the two actresses playing them were more appealing than the inexpressive, boyish Léaud - I simply could not bring myself to believe that these two girls would both feel so attracted to such a bland young man! He was definitely more engaging as Antoine Doinel!). The movie was also successful at portraying something of the difficulty in relations between the sexes in the Edwardian era - how young men and women really needed to go clandestine if they hoped to even get to know each other decently (not just carnally but also emotionally). The issue of women's sexuality, and how it was virtually denied them in this epoch - the price to be paid for so-called respectability - is also a theme that's successfully conveyed by the movie. How could a woman rightfully claim her own sexual identity in such a day and age? An interesting question worth raising. Fortunately, we were spared any simplistic clichés contrasting "libertine France" vs. "strait-laced Britain" as well.
This is on the whole also a good-looking movie, with lovely sets, costumes and photography. One question: why does everyone in the movie (including the title) keep referring to the two sisters as English when they live in Wales and define themselves as Welsh?
