SPOILERS INCLUDED: The morning-after breakfast scene is so endearingly simple as Truffaut manages to convey all of Antoine & Christine's affection sans pushy music, cliché, or even dialogue- just the two of them sitting at a table, scribbling their declarations of romance to one another on a piece of napkin over breakfast. We don't even need to know what they're writing down. We, the audience are already captivated and satisfied to just share in their intimate moment celebrating life's little joys.
And as we watch the scene with the flighty Antoine staring at his own image in the mirror, repeating the names of his objects of desires with utterly convicted indecision, the question of who should he pursue becomes a matter of life and death. Fabienne Tabard. Christine Darbon. We wait in suspense. And when he begins to repeat his own name with the same earnestness, we realize that perhaps this love is not fleeting- could how he chooses love determine the very essence who he is?
Truffaut made a slight, refreshing break from the melancholy of the first two Antoine Doinel series. This third installment has some of the most charming cinematic exclamations of love and that twenty-something search for the "joie de vivre."
And as we watch the scene with the flighty Antoine staring at his own image in the mirror, repeating the names of his objects of desires with utterly convicted indecision, the question of who should he pursue becomes a matter of life and death. Fabienne Tabard. Christine Darbon. We wait in suspense. And when he begins to repeat his own name with the same earnestness, we realize that perhaps this love is not fleeting- could how he chooses love determine the very essence who he is?
Truffaut made a slight, refreshing break from the melancholy of the first two Antoine Doinel series. This third installment has some of the most charming cinematic exclamations of love and that twenty-something search for the "joie de vivre."