Antoine and Colette (1962)

Directed by: François Truffaut
Written by: François Truffaut
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, Patrick Auffay, Rosy Varte, François Darbon, Jean-François Adam

In this second installment of the Truffaut's semiautobiographical series, Antoine Doinel is 18 and is living on his own working for the Philip's record company. He's finally away from his family living the independent life that he craved in 400 Blows. While attending a classical music lecture he meets a girl named Collette and falls in love. Despite his efforts, they remain friends -- I can relate to that -- and he goes so far as moving into an apartment across the street from hers.

Strangely, in Antoine and Colette and Stolen Kisses, Doinel seems to get along with his girlfriends' parents better than he does with the girls, and unlike in 400 Blows, adults -- at least these adults -- seem to admire the independent youth, despite all of his shortcomings.

I actually liked Antoine and Colette more than 400 Blows, because they both had the same grittiness but Antoine and Colette's had a more focused story -- probably because Truffaut works with shorter narratives.

I enjoyed this film because, to a certain extent, it lives out a fantasy for me, in that Doinel is the type of person I would have wanted to be at 18, living on my own in the city. It does a better job of portraying him as a rebellious intellectual -- somewhat like Dean Moriarty from "On the Road" -- than the previous movie did and it also captures the environment of what I think living in New York in the 1950s would have been like, when kids actually had intellectual (do kids go to classical music lectures anymore?)

As far as I am concerned, it is an ideal example of literary Romanticism on film.