Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
frankwiener
Even though Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn created some magical chemistry together in spite of the shoddy material that was handed to them, even though the sweet Mancini score was very endearing, and even though the scenery of southern France was breathtaking, I found the repetitious dialogue very monotonous after the first hour or so. Having been married for 27 years, I understand at least a little bit of what the writers and director were trying to express, but an hour of this was more than enough for me to endure.The segment with William Daniels, Eleanor Bron, and their spoiled brat of a child was entirely too realistic for me and became more annoying than entertaining. I have known too many disagreeable nudnicks like Cathy and Howard Manchester in real life, and the very thought of suffering through a long road trip with them actually made me instantly carsick. Why would Joanna and Mark agree to do this in the first place? If a reason were given, I must have nodded off at that point. The role of Maurice (Claude Dauphine) as Mark's perpetually invasive, interfering boss also became very displeasing and unrealistic to me. How could these architects achieve so much success when they designed a house with a fundamentally flawed electrical system? Was there a subtle message there about the shaky basis of Mark's supposedly accomplished career? "Mark, can I speak to you for ten minutes?" Oh shut up, Maurice. Less talking and more thought, please. And what exactly did Joanna see in David? To me, he was just another stiff who only helped to weigh the movie down even more.While the major components of the whole, especially the lovely presence and strong performance of Audrey Hepburn, should have produced an outstanding overall result, this just fell flat for me. The trip started out smooth, but I found myself getting very road weary in the middle and looking for the nearest Best Western where I could take a good nap.
elevenangrymen
Two For The Road came out of nowhere and completely blindsided me. It was a Friday night, I had nothing to do, and this was Hepburn and Donan, who had worked so well together in Charade. I had absolutely no warning of the film I was about to watch, I thought I was watching a charming romantic comedy, and that was somewhat true. I was watching a charming romantic comedy mixed with gut wrenching drama.The story is the marriage of two people Joanna and Mark. They meet when Joanna's choir group gets sick with the chicken pox, leaving only Mark and Joanna unharmed. They both head out on the road to hitchhike falling in love in the process. The film follows their marriage from the beginning all the way to the end, or perhaps just a new beginning.The first thing that I find unique about Two For The Road is it's non-linear narrative. We cut back and forth from the beginning, to the end, to the middle, etc. It keeps the film fresh and exciting and makes the scenes of early love so gut-wrenching as opposed to the later scenes of fighting and pain. This film is not afraid to show two people fall in love at the same time as the fall out of love. Now the performers. Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney have the greatest chemistry than I have ever seen. As opposed to her previous films with her falling in love with men 30 years her senior, here the relationship feels perfectly balanced. This is probably Audrey Hepburn's best performance, and one of Albert Finney's greatest.The film balances however on maintaining a balance between the earlier and later scenes and this duty falls mainly upon the director and the writer. The screenplay by Frederic Raphael is wonderful featuring many scenes of wonderful comedy and heartbreaking drama. The direction by Stanley Donan is some of his best.The film however suffers from the classic "hollywood ending" which is taints an otherwise great film, making it instead just very good. I give it 10 stars because it managed to move me in a way I have never felt before. It is a truly great film.
James Hitchcock
Like a number of Audrey Hepburn's films ("Funny Face", "Charade", "Paris When It Sizzles" and others), "Two for the Road" is set in France, but whereas those films were all set in Paris this one takes place in the French countryside. It opens with a British couple, Mark and Joanna Wallace, flying their white Mercedes-Benz roadster to Northern France. Their plan is to drive down through the country to Saint-Tropez where Mark, an architect, has a meeting with a wealthy client, the idea being to combine business with pleasure. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that there are tensions in their marriage, and the two are constantly bickering and quarrelling. As they journey through France they discuss and recall several earlier trips along the same route, especially those in the earlier days of their marriage when their relationship was a happier one.Trying to explain the plot any further would be difficult because the story is told in an extreme non-linear fashion, abruptly switching without warning between scenes set in the present and those set in the past and mingling the events of one journey with those of another. The only way in which director Stanley Donen and scriptwriter Frederic Raphael attempt to maintain continuity is, at each stage of the journey, to juxtapose scenes of the present day with scenes set in the same geographical area during previous journeys.I have been a great fan of Audrey Hepburn ever since I fell in love with her watching "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as a teenager, but even I have to admit that "Two for the Road" is both one of her weaker films and one of her weaker performances. It would seem that there are roles beyond the reach of even an actress of her talents, and the role of a wife whose husband is tired of her appears to have been one of them. Now I am well aware that in real life Audrey was twice divorced, but her screen persona, at least in her comedies- and this film is officially a comedy- was almost invariably that of a beautiful, playful, enchanting and utterly adorable girl, the sort of woman that no husband could possibly tire of unless he were either mad or a complete bastard. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, when a man is tired of Audrey Hepburn, he is tired of life. Had Audrey been able to hint at a darker side to Joanna's personality, Mark's disillusionment with married life might have been more understandable, but Joanna comes across as just as totally lovable as every other Hepburn heroine from Sabrina to Suzy in "Wait Until Dark"- and, even though Audrey was 38 when she made the film, just as beautiful.Albert Finney, by contrast, has no difficulty in playing a man whose wife is tired of him; the problem here is that his Mark is so charmless and arrogant that it is difficult to understand why Joanna should have fallen for him in the first place, or why their marriage should have lasted so long. Finney, incidentally, was seven years younger than Hepburn, which must have made a refreshing change for an actress who spent much of the earlier part of her career playing the love-interest to men old enough to be her father (Bogart, Fonda, Astaire, Harrison) or nearly so (Peck).As I said, the film is officially a comedy, and there are indeed some genuinely comic moments, ranging from the slapstick to the satirical. An example of the former is the scene where Mark and Joanna's car runs out of control down a hill and ends up demolishing a barn- that could have been something out of Buster Keaton. Most of the satire is at the expense of Mark's American ex-girlfriend Cathy Maxwell-Manchester, her pompous, priggish husband Howard and their badly-behaved daughter Ruthie. Even though the film had an American director, these scenes are based upon what were some fairly common British prejudices about Americans around this period, and doubtless explain why the film was not a great success across the Atlantic.Unfortunately, the film's comic elements do not sit very easily with its underlying serious theme, the decline in the relationship between Mark and Joanna. This theme is also undermined by the film's unorthodox structure and non-linear narrative which makes it difficult to follow the progress of that relationship or to understand what is going on. The movie was in its day considered "experimental", but not every experiment, whether in science or the cinema, is a successful one, and I was left with the strong impression that the story of Mark and Joanna is one that could have benefited from a more conventional, linear style. 5/10
kenjha
This film examines the troubled ten-year marriage of a tempestuous couple, moving about in time and place to paint a complete picture. Initially, the chronological jumping around is disconcerting and confusing. Eventually, however, the episodes add up to something interesting, providing an absorbing portrait of the rise and fall of a love affair. Donen goes a bit overboard with his cinematic tricks, trying too hard to be chic. Hepburn and Finney are excellent as the sparring couple. The scenes involving their friends (Bron and Daniels) are quite amusing. The latter couple has what is probably the most obnoxious, spoiled child ever put on film.
