Word: leaud
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...this tradition of paying homage to his mentors: In The Spider's Stratagem, made in 1969, the camera lingers briefly over a poster for Robert Aldrich's Wagnerian western The Last Sunset; in Tango there is a scene aboard a barge, between Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud, that is meant to evoke Jean Vigo's classic L'Atalante...
...minor problems by themselves not enough to scuttle the film. A far more serious difficulty lies in the characterization, where Truffaut's once sure instinct for just the right gesture and just the right tone of voice has now deserted him. Most notable is the failure of Jean-Pierre Leaud's performance as Claude...
Vainly, Truffaut tries to recapture the formulas of past success. He uses a novelist (Roche) who once served him well and an actor (Leaud) he has often depended upon. He repeats his old formal mannerisms: voice-over narrative, camera rising, softly-focused backgrounds, and minute attention to period decor. In a cafe sequence there is even an exact duplication of a shot from Jules and Jim. But Truffaut is only going through the motions. At times he seems bored with his characters and one can hardly blame him. They are tedious people of a dull class in a dying culture...
...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...
APART FROM WHAT this implies about Leaud's acting range, it raises some serious questions about Truffaut's limitations as writer-director. In thirteen years of filmmaking, his consistent theme, with remarkably few exceptions, has been the problems of adolescence--maturation, identity, introspection, loneliness, sexual confusion and so on. Even his middle-aged characters are generally adolescents in disguise. At times he has handled this theme as well as anyone, but in Two English Girls, when he makes hesistant attempts to break new ground, he fails completely. He has begun to take his characters too seriously, and they...