Antoine and Collette 1962

L'amour à vingt ans (1962) is a film composed of five episodes directed by Renzo Rossellini, Shintarô Ishihara, Marcel Ophüls, Andrzej Wajda and François Truffaut. Antoine et Colette, the episode made by Truffaut, is a little wonder of barely half an hour, something like the missing link for many of the followers of the character Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), who since The Four Hundred Blows (1959) starred in several of Truffaut’s films.

Here we meet Antoine at age 17, independent, employed and with a fondness for cinema, literature and music. While attending a Berlioz concert he meets Colette (Marie-France Pisier), a girl somewhat older than he, He falls irremediably in love with her and tries to conquer her by building friendships through her parents, moving to an apartment whose balcony faces the girl's, but she does not seem to correspond.  Colette accompanies him to the movies and concerts, accepts him as a friend and introduces him to his parents, who welcome him almost like a son, but Antoine can’t go beyond sending him a love letter and stealing a couple of kisses. In the last scene, at Colette's house, she introduces her boyfriend. While the two go out to have fun, the poor and disillusioned Antoine stays with the parents to watch television.

One could say that Antoine and Colette was largely autobiographical in some respects. When Truffaut was seventeen years old, he fell in love with a girl named Liliana Litvin that he met at the Cinematheque francaise. He was so taken with Liliana that he left the suburbs where he worked and moved to Paris so he could be closer with her. Liliana, on the other hand, had an active social life and enjoyed the companionship of several admirers (among them were Truffaut's friends, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean Gruault), all of them competing for her attention.

Film Comment editor-at-large Kent Jones wrote, that "the half-hour Antoine and Colette is among the most beautiful things Truffaut ever committed to film. There is something bracing about its swiftness alone, and about the way Truffaut slices confidently through his material, both expository (Antoine's modest living situation, his job, his determination to land Colette) and emotional (a love of Paris, a deep attachment to music, and a burning desire for women, all three traits shared by the director and his alter ego).

It would take six years to meet Antoine and Colette again, this time in Stolen Kisses (Baisers volés, 1968), a wonderful film scored by Que reste-t-il de nos amours, by Charles Trenet, one of those songs that will accompany them for the rest of their lives: Baisers volés / Rêves mouvants / That reste-t-il of tout cela ... Colette, taking a walk with her husband and son, meets Antoine, who is working as a disastrous private detective. They greet each other, cross four words and say goodbye. C'est la vie!

Producer: Pierre Roustang

Director: Francois Truffaut

Screenplay: Francois Truffaut

Cinematography: Raoul Coutard

Film Editing: Claudine Bouche

Music: Georges Delerue

Cast: Jean-Pierre Leaud (Antonie Doinel), Marie-France Pisier (Colette), Patrick Auffay (Rene), Rosy Varte (Colette's mother), Jean-Francois Adam (Albert Tazzi).

BW-30m.