[The Miscarried Might-Have-Been] on Truffaut's [Two English Girls, 1971]

by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]







In the stylism so akin to the French New Wave Film revolution, Truffaut's 1971 romantic drama, [Two English Girls] is a film adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roche's 1956 novel of the same title.

The film sets in Paris around the turn of the 20th century, when Claude, the male lead portrayed by Truffaut's "artist fetish" Jean-Pierre Leaud, is invited by Anne (Kiki Markham), an old family friend to spend the summer with her family on the coast of Wales. But in quick succession and turn of events, Anne is not interested in Claud as a lover for herself, rather one for her introverted, bashful sister Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). The match becomes a fit, Claud and Muriel becomes closer, begins to grow on one another and with hopes of being married, both Muriel and Claud's mother agree that the couple should spend a year apart, Claud returning to Paris and Muriel remaining in Wales.

Now this is where Truffaut takes shape with his adaptation, do due-in-proper justice to Henri-Pierre Roche. Claud begins to meet very attractive women and begins to stray, which eventually led him to the bed of Muriel's older sister Anne, who came to Paris to study art. Claud then becomes hopeful of a relationship with Anne, until she leaves him for a publisher, going on a vacation with him to Persia. Muriel then learns about the betrayal of her fiance and her older sister (the responsible party which introduced the two initially), which whom Muriel forgives, once Anne is returned home by the publisher, as she dies in Wales.

Muriel, who had since accepted a job in Belgium, spends a night with Claud and upon waking, revealing to him that now they must part forever, only to later write of her pregnancy. Claud, believing now the door for a happy life with Muriel again open, is shocked and despondent when a second letter arrives from Muriel, confessing of the miscarried fetus and that she would not be returning to him again.

The film leaves Claud, just Claud, no wife, no child, a writer with only dreams, shattered ideals, scuttled hopes and fanciful fantasies never to have bore fruit. He, Claud, is a representation of all of humanity, of most who have lost and wondered on the "What ifs."

For Claud, as is for most today, the sunken dream is one swallowed by irreversible timescapes, scientifically improbable revivals. A single mistake by Claud set off the chain reaction, a rattle of senses to once and for all set in stone Muriel's aforementioned disposition of introverted aloneness, untrusting of anyone other than her own interior.

Truffaut, together with Roche, are two artist brought together by novel and by film, by sentiments and by personal experience, the Auteur Theory in full measure as the pen of the writer in full, broad stroke. What cannot be taken from the experience, the love triangle and deception between Claud, Anne and Muriel? One thing we can truly count on is that our actions tend to inflict upon us consequences we are seldom ready for and most of which we spend the entirety of our lives yet trying to endure.