Word: doinel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Leaud began his career at age fourteen playing Antoine Doinel in 400 Blows the first installment of Truffaut's autobiographical trilogy. He later continued the role in two more episodes and was consistently adept in his portrayal of Truffaut's shy and awkward screen persona. For the first third of Two English Girls. Leaud offers one more variation on that character. But as the film progresses, Claude matures, grows callous then regretful, and Leaud's performance becomes unconvincing. "I look old," says a pensive Claude toward the end of the film, but it is only wishful thinking. Jean Pierre Leaud...
...Board (Domicile Conjugal), this director's latest work, is the final episode in his remarkable cycle of films utilizing his autobiographical persona, Antoine Doinel. As in the previous segments of this informal series ( The 400 Blon's, Love at Twenty, and Stolen Kisses ), the hero is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud and his dilemma has to do with the conflict between his grandest visions of romance and the dulling routine that is in reality his existence. With variations. Antoine's problem is shared by the heroes of most of Truffaut's non-Doinel films as well- but nowhere...
...able to keep. All the territory one might expect to find in a film about the first year of a marriage is here: the trivial spats, the role conflicts, the discussions about toothpaste, the birth of the first child, the first extra-marital affair. But as one expects, Antoine Doinel does not accept this rigmarole as an unquestionable natural order. He fights hard to break up the monotony until there is nothing left to do but give himself up to the dailiness of life...
THIS final defeat is decidedly different from the denouements of the other Doinel pictures. The 400 Blows ended with Antoine on the beach, granted at least the illusion of freedom and much of the hope; there was the possibility that the cruel prison of his youth now belonged largely to the past. When Antoine and Christine finally get together at the end of Stolen Kisses, we were allowed the luxury of betting on their marriage as a successful vehicle for maintaining the esprit of the romantic, non-confining Paris Truffaut lovingly displays throughout that film...
Truffaut, however much we may love him, demonstrates the impossibility of our affection once and for all in his new film. He dashes not only the small hopes left to us by the other Doinel pictures, but also those allowed by Jules and Jim, Shoot the Piano Player and Mississippi Mermaid. We should have known it was coming, for our adoration of this director has always been based on our sense of his understanding that love is not sweet, simple and easy no matter what its appearances. Embracing in a lobby or a park or a church will solve nothing...