Two English Girls

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Two English Girls
Directed by François Truffaut
Written by Henri-Pierre Roché (novel)
François Truffaut
Jean Gruault
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud
Kika Markham
Stacey Tendeter
Sylvia Marriott
Marie Mansart
Music by Georges Delerue
Cinematography Néstor Almendros
Editing by Martine Barraqué
Yann Dedet
Distributed by Valoria Films
Release date(s) November 18, 1971
Running time 108 min.
Language French/English
IMDb profile

Two English Girls (original French title: Les deux anglaises et le continent, UK Title: Anne and Muriel), is a 1971 French film directed by François Truffaut and based on a 1956 novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Claude, Kika Markham as Anne, and Stacey Tendeter as Muriel.

The novel was available in its first English translation as of January, 2004, translated by Walter Bruno, published by Cambridge Book Review Press, Cambridge, WI.

[edit] Synopsis

The film begins in Paris, somewhere around the year 1902. Claude Roc (Leaud), a young middle-class Frenchman, meets Ann Brown (Markham), a young Englishwoman, and they become quick friends. Ann invites Claude to spend the holidays at her family's mansion, where we meet Ann's widowed mother (Marriott) and younger sister Muriel (Tendeter). During the holidays, Claude, Ann and Muriel become very close and Claude gradually falls in love with Muriel. Not fully knowing the couple's intentions, both families lay down a one-year-long separation without any contact before agreeing to get married. Claude goes back to Paris when he has many love affairs, and eleven months later he sends Muriel a break-off letter. A despondant Muriel sinks into a deep depression, and upon returning to Paris to defend her sister, Ann falls for Claude. This instigates a love triangle that consumes the threesome for the next twenty years.

[edit] Further reading

  • MacKillop, Ian (2000) Free Spirits: Henri Pierre Roché, François Truffaut and the Two English Girls, Bloomsbury, London, ISBN 0-7475-4855-2

[edit] External links