LOVE ON THE RUN (1979) was Francois Truffaut‘s final film about Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud), whose semi-autobiographical life story began in The 400 Blows. While I imagine Truffaut would eventually have returned to Antoine had he not died five years later, the movie is the kind of intensely self-referential work I’d expect if the story was wrapping up — so who knows?
After ending the previous film, Bed and Board, in a good place, Antoine has managed to screw up: he and his wife are divorcing but he’s already found a new love (Dorothée), only his usual commitment issues are getting in the way. Then he runs into Colette, his dream girl from Antoine and Colette, and both of them are maybe, sort of, possibly interested in seeing if they can do better together this time. A fine film though given Antoine’s track record I’m not the HEA at the end of the film will work out. “If you don’t practice, you’ll wind up a music critic.”
Also from 1979, TV’s TIME EXPRESS was considerably less entertaining. In each episode, someone with a desperate need to put right what once went wrong gets a mysterious train ticket with the date of their fatal mistake written on it. Once they board, Vincent Price and Coral Browne explain their employer, the “head of the line,” is giving them a second chance: a shy guy who broke his date with a dream girl wants a do-over; a man who became rich when he stumbled over $2 million in dirty money wants to do the right thing and turn it in; a man with a dying wife wants to find her brother (they were adopted separately and the records were lost in a fire) so the man can give her a bone transplant.
It could have been a cool mix of Fantasy Island and Quantum Leap but I can see why only four episodes aired. While Price could make an awesome knockoff of Mr. Roarke he has no agency — all he and Browne do is review the guests’ backstory, without intervening or influencing it themselves (they are, after all, only employees). And in none of the stories does history change — instead the passengers have to get back to the present and then change their lives. When Richard Masur gets his date with Morgan Fairchild, for instance, it’s a disaster. He makes no attempt to see her again so his life apparently goes on as before. When he gets back to the present, Fairchild finds him and reveals one bad date didn’t stop her falling for him. The whole thing is just clunky as hell so watching the whole thing was purely for curiosity (I wanted to watch while writing Now and Then We Time Travel and back then couldn’t find it). “I don’t like to meet strangers because I don’t know who they are.”
HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2024) is a strange mix of silent-film slapstick with videogame in telling the story of a 19th century trapper and hard-luck case (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) whose future starts to pick up after he meets beautiful Olivia Graves — but her father will only approve a marriage if the trapper brings in hundreds of beaver pelts. The slapstick humor here is overwhelmingly visual which makes it hard to describe here (in fairness, I could describe it if I had more time, but …). All I can say is, it’s well worth your time to watch.
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