Love on the Run (1979)

Taglines: Antoine Daniel. He’s got four ladies…Nine lives…and Plenty of alibis!

Love on the Run movie storyline. Antoine Doinel is having a love affair with the vinyl seller Colette Tazzi. After five years of troubled marriage (with several separations), Antoine and Christine Doinel have a private audience with the judge and conclude an amicable divorce process.

His former sweetheart and presently lawyer, Colette Tazzi, sees Antoine leaving the court. She goes to a bookstore to buy his autobiographical novel that was published a couple of years ago. When Antoine goes with Alphonse to the train station he sees Colette on another train, and he jumps from the platform to the train and travels with her. They recall their adolescent love and disclose their sentimental relationships; but when Colette tells how she raises money for her self-support, Antoine is disappointed and seeks out Sabine.

Love on the Run (French: L’amour en Fuite) is a 1979 French comedy-drama film directed by François Truffaut. It is Truffaut’s fifth and final film about the character Antoine Doinel. A significant portion of the film is made up of selected clips from the previous films in the series. It was entered into the 29th Berlin International Film Festival.

Brief Review for Love on the Run

Love on the Run is a cinematic valentine from Francois Truffaut to Antoine Doinel — a character he has developed on the screen since 1958. The protagonist is getting a divorce from Christine (Claude Jade), the girl he wooed in Stolen Kisses and was uncomfortably married to in Bed and Board. He’s now in a relationship with Sabine (Dorothee), a women he met reconstructing a torn photograph discarded by one of her previous lovers.

The final piece in Antoine’s love triangle comes in a chance encounter with Colette (Marie-France Pisier), the girl he was infatuated with in Love at Twenty. She’s now a lawyer who is sharp enough to see Antoine’s flaws as a womanizer. Colette wasn’t impressed with him in her youth and she refuses to fall under his spell now.

The three-sided look at the love life of a skirt-chaser is further amplified by glimpses of Antoine’s strange relationship with his sexually loose mother in The 400 Blows. This movie is sure to appeal to Truffaut’s fans. It comes across as an engaging puzzle putting the pieces of Antoine’s life into a whole. Unfortunately for Love on the Run, the director worked through most of the same thematic material in The Man Who Loved Women. Yet for many, even recycled Truffaut is better than no Truffaut at all in 1979.

Directed by: François Truffaut
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, Marie-France Pisier, Dani, Dorothée, Daniel Mesguich, Julien Bertheau, Jean-Pierre Ducos, Marie Henriau, Rosy Varte, Monique Dury, Alain Ollivier, Julien Dubois
Screenplay by: François Truffaut, Marie-France Pisier, Jean Aurel, Suzanne Schiffman
Production Design by: Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko
Cinematography by: Néstor Almendros
Film Editing by: Martine Barraqué-Curie
Costume Design by: Monique Dury
Makeup Department: Thi-Loan Nguyen
Music by: Georges Delerue
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: AMLF, Gala
Release Date: January 29, 1979