Antoine and Colette is second installment in François Truffaut’s film series about Antoine Doinel, the character he follows from boyhood to adulthood in five films.
The 32-minute short was made for the anthology collection, Love at Twenty, which featured shorts from Truffaut and directors Shintarô Ishihara, Marcel Ophüls, Renzo Rossellini and Andrzej Wajda.
Antoine Doinel made his screen debut in 1959 with Truffaut’s first film, The 400 Blows, a semi-autobiographical film about the boyhood of Antoine and his gradual descent into petty crime.
Doinel’s adventures were followed in three other films: Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, and Love on the Run.
In this chapter, Antoine works at Philips manufacturing LPs, and lives in a furnished room in Place Clichy. He spends his leisure listening to opera and classical music and socializing with René (Patrick Auffay), his school friend.
While attending a Berlioz concert, he spots Colette (Marie-France Pisier), a secondary school student, and falls in love for the first time.
Unlike Antoine, Collette comes from a supportive family, which soon treats him as if he were a member. He soon moves into an apartment across the road from Collette’s.
While upset that Collette is not interested in him romantically, he still accepts dinner invitation from her family, which continues to treat him as surrogate son. His hopes are crashed, however, when Collette leaves with her new date.
Truffaut was a prominent member of the French New Wave, whose other leaders include Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Éric Rohmer.
He dies of brain tumor in 1984, at the prime of his career and life, age 52.
