Disc Reviews

Two For The Road Review

• 30th Jan 2015

Two for the Road is an anti-romance romantic comedy. It is different that’s for sure and uses an interesting edited narrative to tell it’s story. It is also a road movie presenting the road as an endless cycle of life with no destination other than perhaps death or the ‘end of the road’ for a relationship. The film opens with a couple, Mark and Joanna Wallace (played by two 60s screen darlings, Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn). They are waiting at a terminal for a flight to France. There is a snipey disconnection between them as they bitterly despise and appear cynical about the constitution of marriage. On their flight they seem to be perturbed and disturbed by each other’s space creating a sense of awkwardness. They then recall how they met each other on a ferry over to France, on a similar trip that they are currently on, this time on a different mode of transport. Joanna is travelling with friends, while Mark is backpacking alone. It is over 10 years from when we first met Joanna and Mark. Ready to disembark Mark has misplaced his passport and is panicking: he states that “I can see myself stuck on this boat for the rest of my life, going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards”. And that is what we see for the rest of the film – journeys through France during different periods in their relationship. The misplaced passport is a consistent theme in the film, indicating that not much really changes in the relationship or in Mark’s personality. At first Mark is distant, not wanting to get into a relationship and on the first meeting fancies each of Joanna’s travelling companions before finally picking one of her friends (played by a young Jacqueline Bisset) before she comes down with chicken pox. Joanna becomes Mark’s new travel companion and, despite his better wish she the pair end up together. Over the next 12 years their relationship is presented through their trips and is edited together including feuds, the strains a child in the relationship can have culminating in Joanna having a brief affair (while Mark also has a number illicit liaisons). The only indication at where we are with the relationship is indicated by the cars they drive and Hepburn’s hairstyles and clothes.

Released by Eureka! in their Masters of Cinema series and shot almost entirely in the French countryside and near St. Tropez, the film is surprisingly directed by Stanley Donen, famous for his directorial collaborations with Gene Kelly for those spectacular MGM musicals including Singin’ in the Rain. Donen was notorious for being a taskmaster, but there is little indication of that in this film or in the extras. It is, however written by French writer, Frederic Raphael who on the extra on the disc talks of how the idea came into being. He claims that the plot and many of the ideas in the film are based off his own experiences. Most amusingly that also includes the trip with the American couple, the Manchesters with their annoying young daughter. Raphael recalled that he and his wife, themselves without children thought it would be a good idea to go on a trip through France with another a couple with a child, naïve to the fact that they would be confined and fell trapped by the whims of the child. This is disturbingly funny in the film and you can really feel Mark and Joanna’s pain.

In the film Mark comes across as selfish while Joanna seems to giving most of the love in the relationship, growing increasingly frustrated with little in the way of return other than constant threats of divorce. The film is more realistic than cynical and their is a very real connection between the pair. This is underscored (excuse the pun) by Maurice Jarre’s romantic and subtle score and the beautiful colours of Christopher Challis’s cinematography bringing out the colours of Audrey’s very 60s clothes (designed by the likes of Mary Quant and Paco Rabanne) as well as the French locations. On the discussion of the film by Raphael, the writer thought that it would be interesting to use cars as well as Hepburn’s clothes and hairstyles to indicate the various stages of a relationship including an MG Roadster, a bright red Triumph Herald, the American couple’s station wagon and a white Mercedes. Raphael acknowledges with the generic cars we get today this could perhaps not be done the same if remade. An interesting and not altogether obvious choice for Eureka! despite some facile moments in the film it does have a nice French touch to it.

Chris Hick