pasting
together the torn picture of the past
by Douglas Messerli
François Truffaut, Jean Aurel,
Suzanne Schiffman, and Marie-France Pisier (screenplay), François Truffaut
(director) L’Amour en fuite (Love on the Run) / 1979
François Truffaut’s 1979 film, the
last of his Antoine Doinel cycle, is literally a pastiche; but instead of
borrowing from or imitating other filmmakers, he steals pieces from the films
of his own past, including not only the Doinel works (The Four Hundred Blows, Antoine
and Colette, Stolen Kisses and Bed and Board), but from Day for Night, along with references to others of his films.
This recycling of his previous films, which is made quite clear within
the narrative of the new adventures in the life of his man-child, might also be
compared to the metaphor that is at the heart of this new film, Love on the Run. The hero (Jean-Pierre
Léaud) discovers his new lover, Sabine Barnerias (Dorothée), after observing,
in a restaurant telephone booth, a man arguing with his lover over the phone
and angrily tearing up a photograph he leaves behind. Entering the booth, Antoine
picks up the pieces and later pastes them back together, eventually falling in
love with the unknown subject of the photo. After weeks of searching, he tracks
her down working in a record store, and after a few visits, the two strike up a
relationship which, by the time Love on
the Run begins, has, like all of Antoine’s previous relationships with
women (his former wife, Christine [Claude Jade], her assistant Liliane [Dani]
and his childhood unrequited love, Colette [Marie-France Pisier]), falls apart.
Complications—the signing of his divorce decree from Christine, his
promise to take his son Alphonse to the train, and an accidental sighting of
Colette—all appear to intrude upon his new relationship, condemning it to
failure; but the viewer also recognizes, even if he has not seen the other
Doinel films, that they are simply diversions that the failed hero uses to
delay and even scuttle his commitment. The fact that Antoine, moreover, cannot
bring himself to allow these consequential and inconsequential events to
intersect—except through art—makes it quite clear to all of his would-be lovers
that he compartmentalizing his life, using them for his various childish
needs—for a mother, nurse, confessor, and lover—that impedes any wholeness in
his life.
The autobiographical elements of film that point to the director’s own
past are obvious, and Truffaut’s growing discomfort with that is made apparent
in Antoine’s own discussion of his fiction, in which—although he uses events
and individuals in his own life, twists events, combines characters, and
obfuscates in numerous ways—still reveals his inabilities to create something
original. What’s more, into the pastiche of his own art, Trauffaut slips subtle
cinematic references (such as the similarities on the train with Hitchcock’s North by Northwest), along with numerous
red-herrings of plot developments
that are left dangling in mid-air (what is the secret manuscript that Antoine’s
co-worker asks him to lock away in the safe? Why does Christine attempt to
visit Sabine in her apartment? Why does Colette, who has herself lost a child,
become determined to defend a child-murderer, and what does it have to do with
Antoine’s story?) which make for an often turgid tale that confuses more than
it ultimately reveals. It is little
wonder that the director himself agreed with critics who found Love on the Run contrived and
narcissistic.
Léaud, who knew this was to be his last reincarnation as Antoine Doinel,
later admitted to a great sadness while filming the piece. Certainly, this work
lacks the freshness so noted in many Truffaut’s best works.
Nonetheless, there is something to be said by laying all these obvious
“pieces” of life and art out on the cutting board in order to attempt to
release the eternal child from the past that haunts him with the knowledge that
if they can be pasted back together in a slightly different order, the future
can possibly be redeemed. We may never truly believe that the loveable but
psychologically damaged Antoine can ever truly stop running, that he can commit
to a real relationship by interconnecting the various aspects of his life. At
least, by film’s end, there does appear to be some hope.
The sudden appearance of one of his mother’s former lovers, Lucien
(Julien Bertheau) who describes the “monstrously” anarchistic mother as a
“little bird” and takes her traumatized son to see her burial plot in Montmartre
cemetery, Colette’s analysis of his behavior and her generosity of seeking him
out to return to him his beloved photograph of Sabine, and even Christine’s
obvious love for the man she has divorced, all help Antoine to return to
Sabine, revealing to her his devotion and, at least, a promise for a new
future. It is as if Truffaut, himself, in pasting together all these
autobiographical-like images of his art (in the editing of the film, with which
he commented, he was pleased) has been able finally, in laying aside the Doinel
character, to move forward with a commitment to a new work evidenced in
The Last Metro, The Green Room, and
Confidentially Yours. His sudden death
prevented him, perhaps, from fully realizing the symbolic redemption of
Love on the Run.
Los Angeles, April 25, 2015
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2015).
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