L’Amour en fuite (1979) - film review

Now in his thirties, Antoine Doinel has divorced his wife Christine and is having a love affair with a young shop girl, Sabine.   This new relationship becomes strained when Antoine skips a dinner date to take his son Alphonse to the railway station.  There, by chance, he meets his first love, Colette, who is now a successful lawyer.  She has just bought a copy of Antoine’s biography, which relates all of his past loves, and she is not impressed by his poetic licence.  As they talk on the train, Antoine outlines the plot for his next book, in which a man falls in love with the woman in a torn up photograph and devotes himself to finding her.   As Antoine leaves the train in a hurry, he drops a piece of paper.  It is the torn photograph of a young woman, lovingly put together with tape...

With L’Amour en fuite, the fifth and final instalment in the Antoine Doinel saga, François Truffaut closes the book on his favourite character – a character that bears more than a passing similarity to Truffaut himself.  Although the film does not stand up too well in its own right, it manages to drawn together the life of its central character very well and the overall result is immensely satisfying for anyone who has followed the Antoine Doinel series. The film is beautifully scored by Georges Delerue, with a catchy introductory song sung by Alain Souchon.

As in Truffaut’s own life, the Doinel saga is revealed to be a frantic quest for love.  This is accomplished very effectively through the use of flashbacks made up of extracts from the earlier films, including Les Quatres cents coups and the Antoine et Colette segment from the multi-part film L’amour à vingt ans.   In this way, the film assembles the life of its central character in a touching way, reminding us that life is a journey filled with mistakes and blind alleys.  Truffaut also includes some poignant references to his own life, such as his tortured relationship with his own mother.

Because it does rely so heavily on excerpts from previous films (including, annoyingly, La nuit américaine and Une belle fille comme moi), there is not a great deal of new material in this film.  That is probably why it lacks the stature of the previous Doinel instalments.  Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre Léaud, now a mature and confident actor, is at his most engaging and gives perhaps his most compelling performance.  His co-stars Marie-France Pisier, Claude Jade and Dorothée are equally watchable, each bringing their own inimitable charm and style to the film (although Marie-France Pisier gets the best lines).

Although the film was well-received by the critics when it was released in 1979, and a welcome box office success, Truffaut always regarded the film as something of a disappointment, and probably an error of judgement.  At the time, he was resolute that this would be the last film to feature Antoine Doinel, and this declaration gave him the freedom and confidence to move on to other subjects.

© James Travers 2002

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