English Girls

Two English Girls
Film poster
Directed by	François Truffaut
Written by	Henri-Pierre Roché(novel) François Truffaut Jean Gruault
Starring	Jean-Pierre Léaud Kika Markham Stacey Tendeter Sylvia Marriott Marie Mansart
Music by	Georges Delerue
Cinematography	Néstor Almendros
Editing by	Martine Barraqué Yann Dedet
Distributed by	Valoria Films
Release date(s)	18 November 1971
Running time	108 min.
Language	French/English

English Girls,

Two English Girls (original French title: Les deux anglaises et le continent, UK Title: Anne  is a 1971 French film directed by François Truffaut and based on a 1956 novel byHenri-Pierre Roché. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Claude, Kika Markham as Anne, and Stacey Tendeter as Muriel.

The novel was available in its first English translation as of January, 2004, translated by Walter Bruno, published by Cambridge Book Review Press, Cambridge, WI.

Synopsis

The film begins in Paris, somewhere around the year 1902. Claude Roc (Leaud), a young middle-class Frenchman, meets Ann Brown (Markham), a young Englishwoman, and they become quick friends. Ann invites Claude to spend the holidays at her family's mansion, where we meet Ann's widowed mother (Marriott) and younger sister Muriel (Tendeter). During the holidays, Claude, Ann and Muriel become very close and Claude gradually falls in love with Muriel. Not fully knowing the couple's intentions, both families lay down a one-year-long separation without any contact before agreeing to get married. Claude goes back to Paris when he has many love affairs, and eleven months later he sends Muriel a break-off letter. A despondent Muriel sinks into a deep depression, and upon returning to Paris to defend her sister, Ann falls for Claude. This instigates a love triangle that consumes the threesome for the next twenty years.

Further reading

• MacKillop, Ian (2000) Free Spirits: Henri Pierre Roché, François Truffaut and the Two English Girls, Bloomsbury, London, ISBN 0-7475-4855-2

(source:wikipedia)