Love on the Run

Director: François Truffaut, François Truffaut, François Truffaut, François Truffaut

1979 / 94min / 35mm

In the bittersweet fifth and final entry in Truffaut and Léaud’s Antoine Doinel cycle, Antoine and wife Christine (Claude Jade) have called it quits, leaving the field clear for Marie France-Pisier—reprising her role from 1962’s Antoine et Colette—to come back into his life, inspiring him to write a self-reflective autobiographical novel. Told in nonlinear fashion and drawing on clips (and outtakes) from the preceding Doinel films, Truffaut’s tender goodbye to his alter ego of some 20 years is both sparkling romantic comedy and a sly subversion of the genre’s happily-ever-after tropes.