The fifth and final installment of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series feels at times like one of those compilation episodes they make on television series when they are running behind schedule: there is a rough sort of plot (Antoine's getting divorced, sees an ex hop on a train and follows her) but the film is mostly flashbacks, either to earlier films or new scene shot so they seem to be flashbacks to earlier films. It's interesting to watch since the same actors repeat their roles - instead of an actor playing "young" or a different actor who get the actual actor playing the actor roles. It also reminds you that Jean-Pierre Léaud, an OK actor as an adult, was exceptional in The 400 Blows (it would be interesting to see a documentary contrasting child actors who made it as adults eg Roddy McDowall, Dean Stockwell, Natalie Wood - to see whether they got better or more inhibited or whatever).It's nice to see the clips again and I guess it brings things full circle, but Truffaut is slumming here - only once, when Antoine talks to his mother's ex lover, does the piece approach any depth. (It's like it needed a death or something not just an amiable divorce). A surprisingly large amount of screen time is spent on Antoine's ex, Colette (Marie-France Pisier, who co-wrote the script which is maybe why she gets so much screen time - she might be more familiar to American audiences since she played the lead in The Other Side of Midnight) - she gets her own story that doesn't involve Antoine (a lawyer who is also a high class hooker... c'mon Truffaut, stop it with the hookers, already). Dorothee, who plays Antoine's nice new girlfriend, was a children's television host in the 80s so presumably her topless scene has given the film a sort of pop culture immortality there.
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