General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Two English Girls

Two English Girls (French: Les deux Anglaises et le continent) is a 1971 French romantic drama directed by François Truffaut, adapted from Henri-Pierre Roché's 1956 novel of the same name. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Claude Roc, a young Frenchman who falls in love with two English sisters, Ann (Kika Markham) and Muriel Brown (Stacey Tendeter), in a love triangle set at the start of the 20th century.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Les deux Anglaises et le continent; released in France on 18 November 1971¹
Source	Second novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, published in 1956; screenplay by Truffaut and Jean Gruault³
Principal cast	Jean-Pierre Léaud (Claude Roc), Kika Markham (Ann Brown), Stacey Tendeter (Muriel Brown), with Sylvia Marriott and Philippe Léotard²
Key crew	Cinematography Nestor Almendros; music Georges Delerue; editing Martine Barraqué and Yann Dedet²
Running times	Originally released at 108 minutes (another source gives 118 minutes); the 1984 director's cut runs 132 minutes¹^•⁴^•⁵
Initial reception	A critical and commercial failure in France, Truffaut's first box-office failure at home since The Soft Skin (1963)⁶^•⁴
Later standing	89% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (19 reviews); restored in 4K/HDR in 2023 by MK2 Films⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Plot

At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Roc, a young middle-class Frenchman, meets Ann Brown, a young Englishwoman, in Paris. She invites him to the house in Wales where she lives with her mother and her sister Muriel, intending him for Muriel. During the visit Claude falls in love with Muriel and asks her to marry him, but both families require a year-long separation without contact before approving the marriage. Claude returns to Paris, has love affairs, and sends Muriel a letter breaking off the engagement. Ann then travels to Paris to champion her heartbroken sister, but falls for Claude herself, and over the following years Claude's preference shifts as the three remain entangled.²^•⁷

The story is punctuated by separations, journeys, reunions, and deaths, and traces the course of a life rather than a single romance.⁵ Ann's last words in the film, "If you send for a doctor, I will see him now," are the words Emily Brontë reportedly spoke before she died, which IMDb's trivia notes suggest Truffaut, an avid reader, used as an homage.¹

Source and screenplay

The film is Truffaut's second adaptation of a Henri-Pierre Roché novel, after Jules and Jim (1962); Roché's two novels were his only books, and they echo each other as romantic triangles.⁹ According to the Cinémathèque française, Truffaut asked his co-writer Jean Gruault in the spring of 1968 to write a scenario using three sources: the 1956 novel, Roché's private diaries, which had inspired the autobiographical narrative, and passages from Jules et Jim. The first scenario ran to more than 500 pages and was set aside; Truffaut returned to the project in January 1970 and reworked the script quickly with Gruault to shoot in the spring.³

Truffaut described the film as being entirely about love: "If you do not like hearing about love in the cinema, you should not go see Les Deux anglaises. There is not one image, not one sentence that does not relate to it."³

Production context

Truffaut threw himself into the film in 1971 after what the New Wave Film Encyclopedia calls the worst depression of his life, following his break-up with Catherine Deneuve; Le Monde reports that in 1971, suffering a nervous depression for private reasons, he made a stay in a clinic, and it was there that he reread Roché's novel.¹⁰^•¹¹ Pauline Kael, in her 1971 review, suggested that the sisters had come to be painfully associated in the director's mind with two real-life sisters, the actresses Françoise Dorléac and Catherine Deneuve, with whom Truffaut had worked and had love affairs.¹²

Although the story is set on the Welsh coast, the location scenes were actually shot in Normandy; a few continuity shots had to be filmed indoors at the small harbor of Goury because of rainy weather.⁹^•⁶

Style

Truffaut saved the narration for himself, using his own voice, so that Roché's prose could be heard in the cinema; as he observed, "If the beauty of a literary work lies in its prose, there is no reason not to let this prose be heard in the cinema."¹³ Nestor Almendros's impressionist-styled cinematography, in washed pastel color, evokes the paintings of Auguste Renoir, and the desaturated color was meant to invoke early two-tone Technicolor.¹³^•¹⁴ Roger Ebert, reviewing the film in 1972, noted its low-keyed color and muted sound, and called it discreet even while filming the most explicit scenes Truffaut had done.¹⁵

Release and reception

The film opened in France on 18 November 1971, followed by Denmark (14 January 1972), Finland (25 February 1972), Italy (April 1972, Sanremo Film Festival), and Sweden (24 April 1972).¹⁶ In the United States it premiered at the New York Film Festival on 11 October 1972 and opened in limited release on 15 October 1972.¹⁷

It was a critical and financial disappointment on release, seen at first as little more than a failed variation on Jules and Jim, and it flopped at the French box office, becoming Truffaut's first film to fail in his home country since The Soft Skin.¹²^•⁶ Disappointed by the reception, Truffaut cut about 20 minutes from the film to make it more commercial, without success; in 1984 he restored the cut footage, finishing the work shortly before his death, and the longer director's cut, 132 minutes, was released the following year.¹⁰^•⁶^•¹

Reputation has since changed markedly. The film is now routinely referred to as "one of Truffaut's greatest achievements," and Rotten Tomatoes records 89% on the Tomatometer from 19 reviews and an 82% audience score.¹²^•⁷ Télérama called it "undoubtedly the film where Truffaut reveals himself the most."⁵ A 4K/HDR restoration by MK2 Films, with the support of the CNC and ARTE France, was completed in 2023.⁸

Comparison with Jules and Jim

Both films adapt semi-autobiographical Roché novels about romantic triangles, but they invert each other's structure: in Jules and Jim two men love the same woman, while here two sisters love the same Frenchman.¹²^•⁹ Critics have stressed the difference in tone. Michael Atkinson, writing for Turner Classic Movies, contrasts the earlier film's sensual nostalgia with Two English Girls as an analytical examination of romantic destruction; Janus Films describes it as trading the earlier masterpiece's vivacious energy for a more deliberate, dreamlike style, a tale more suffused with regret.⁹^•¹⁸ Roger Ebert framed the difference by the director's age: Jules and Jim was a young man's film, made when Truffaut was twenty-eight, while this is the work of a man some ten or twelve years further on, more fully aware of the consequences of an opportunity lost.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026