"Preliminaries are over. Time to attack."

Antoine and Colette (Antoine et Colette) (short) | rel. 1962 | dir. François Truffaut

Spoilers. You've been warned.

I am fascinated by the idea of unrequited love. It's the longing, the desire, and the temptation that make love stories so interesting. For all those emotions to go on without a definite end is quite depressing--but strangely romantic and interesting, especially as portrayed by popular culture. Love itself is already a complex subject, but unreciprocated love might as well take a life of its own.

For those reasons, I fell in love with Antoine and Colette. Francois Truffaut's short film chronicles the late teenage years of the young protagonist in The 400 Blows. The short was originally part of a commercially unsuccessful collection of short films by other French directors, Love at Twenty. While other shorts in the anthology have become rare and unpopular, Antoine and Colette survives.

Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), who was last seen on a beach after running away from the observation center, is now seventeen years old and working at Phillips, a record company. The voice-over narration tells the audience that he was sent back to the observation center after his escape and was sent to another center with stricter surveillance. With the help of a psychologist, he was able to leave the center and live independently, like he wished. He is passionate about music and frequently attends concerts. One evening, he attends a concert with his old friend René (Patrick Auffay), a glamorous young woman, Colette (Marie-France Pisier) catches Antoine's eye.

Antoine desperately seeks Colette's affections by trading records and books with her, taking her to concerts, moving across the street from her (obsessive much?), and even getting close to her warm, welcoming family. All his efforts are eventually worthless and what is left is the broken heart of a young man who has nowhere to hide from the confines of personal humiliation.

All the emotional endeavors, believing, and dreaming for nothing? That happens and it sucks. Big time.

Even with the pangs of the distortion of young love, Antoine and Colette is a work of superb charm and warmness. Truffaut, perhaps recalling his own experiences of the disappointments of young love, films an even more intimate portrait of life than The 400 Blows. Both Léaud and Pisier are attractive young actors who deliver very natural performances. Surely, Antoine and Colette is not better-made than the previous Antoine Doinel adventure, but it has a certain youthful energy and bliss injected in every frame that is extraordinarily touching. But the film keeps in mind that youth is brief and breezy--and so is the film itself.

I am completely, utterly in love with this lovely film.

Rating: 9.5/10

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The entire film has been uploaded on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (The video is a tad bright and has several sound problems throughout but it's totally worth twenty-nine minutes of your life.)

"Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie."

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups) | rel. 1959 | dir. François Truffaut

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of seeing The 400 Blows, a wonderfully moving French film directed by famed New Wave director, Francois Truffaut. Truffaut wrote the script with heavy autobiographical touches to illutraste a portrait of his onerous childhood. But at the heart of The 400 Blows is a coming-of-age story of a troubled young boy, Antoine Doinel--Truffaut's alter ego. Antoine does poorly in school and his home life is marked by the unpleasant knowledge of his mother's infidelity. To escape a conflicted, unhappy life, Antoine is determined to live on his own--even if it turns him towards petty crimes.

On the surface, Antoine is a foolish troublemaker, but he is an extremely sympathetic character as well. Like many people his age, Antoine wants to get the hell out of his home, forget about school, and gain independence. But complete independence requires maturity, and that is something that Antoine doesn't quite grasp yet.

What makes Antoine work so fantastically as a three-dimensional character is Jean-Pierre Léaud's performance. I'm a sucker for child performances, and Léaud's portrayal of Antoine is probably in my top five child performances of all-time. Even in the duller moments of the film, Léaud never fails to mystify me. Léaud's playful boyishness and foolery is accompanied by a magnetic intensity develops the complexity of Antoine's character. Very few actors possess that kind of skill to hold the audience's interest as Léaud does throughout the film.

There is a scene near the end of The 400 Blows that puts Léaud's talents to the test: It is the psychologist scene at the observation school. The psychologist's face is never seen, only her voice is heard. In the audience's point of view, it seems like Antoine is confessing to the camera, a portal that leads directly to the audience. There is such intimacy in that scene, as Antoine spills his emotions and experience, it feels like Antoine is speaking directly to the audience.

The scene works because Léaud keeps the rhythm going at a certain pace that is appropriate to Antoine's character. Antoine answers the questions with crackling innocence and anxiousness that the context of the answers seem surprisingly nonsensical. The questions are calmly answered with honesty and completeness, but there is a lingering anticipation for the next question to be aimed his way.

Antoine just can't seem to wait for the next stage in life--wherever and whatever it might be.

Rating: 8.5/10