Stanley Donen
Two For The Road

If you think you are disillusioned,
rediscover the wonders of the world with me.
And wherever we decide to go,
we will find each other.

"Two For The Road"

Life, the road, love. Everything races towards a destination, yet it is difficult to predict the curves, the bumps, the dangers, but also the more or less unexpected joys that a journey will present before us, and above all, we cannot know with whom we will face this path and how long it will last; this is what happens to Joanna and Mark, the protagonists of what is one of the most beautiful road movies of all time, "Two For The Road" by Stanley Donen. "Two For The Road" is a film of rare beauty, another small masterpiece by the American director that brings out the best of the beautiful screenplay by Frederic Raphael; an "on the road" film in which Donen plays with space and time telling us the love story of a couple over ten years, a couple portrayed by two amazing actors, an immense Audrey Hepburn and a remarkable Albert Finney

One of the most fascinating elements of the film is that the plot does not follow a precise narrative line, in fact, the life of Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) and Mark (Albert Finney) is told through a very special technique made of interlocking flashbacks, moments that appear throughout the film and refer to various periods of their story without following a chronological thread. A very complex work that, however, surprisingly appears natural; I previously mentioned that Donen also plays with space, the film takes place in France, or rather on the French roads that lead from the north of the country (the English Channel) to the French Riviera. The curious thing is that the journey the couple takes is always the same but repeated several times over the ten years of their life together, the various cars used by the two are also protagonists, from an old MG for the first trip as newlyweds (1958) to the 1967 Mercedes that accompanies Joanna and Mark during the most difficult moments of their relationship, intriguingly, the cars appear simultaneously at various moments in the film, intertwining their paths in a very suggestive way. The France that Donen depicts is a protagonist opposing the couple's happiness, it seems that with its roads, it enjoys ruining the journey for the couple. One of the most beautiful scenes is when the old MG catches fire, leaving a dense cloud of smoke, but most importantly, leaving Joanna and Mark stranded, just like when they met a year earlier on the same roads in a chance encounter.

Donen narrates the ten years and the various journeys by overlaying time onto the same places, for example in a scene from their first trip, the two lean against a bridge wall seeking a ride, shortly after, the white Mercedes 280 zooms past the same place with Mark driving, oblivious to a young hitchhiking couple. It is these small, unusual sequences in a film that make "Two For The Road" an interesting film also from a technical standpoint, but what notably stands out is the screenwriter’s ability to tell the story of two people who met by chance, fell in love, and in a very short span of time, got married without giving it much thought. This led them to face major issues once the initial bliss ended, they betray each other, they don’t speak (the scene where Joanna and Mark, newly acquainted, recognize a married couple because they don’t talk and promise they will never be like that, only for Donen to show them ten years later sitting at a table with nothing left to say, is beautiful), but in the end, they cannot do without each other.

The beginning of the film shows them on a plane headed back to France, talking about divorce, dialogue is absent, it is from here that Donen leads the story, from the moment Joanna looks out the window and spots the ferry where she met Mark, beginning to recall moments of their life together, ultimately, the director brings the viewer definitively back to 1967, to the resolution of Joanna and Mark’s relationship, a happy and significant ending, it is always better to travel the road together, even during difficult times.

As long as love retains its fragrance.
I know we will be Two for the road,
for a long, long time yet.

P.S.: The soundtrack is by Henry Mancini, the main theme that accompanies the beautiful opening credits is a poignant jazz piece led by the piano, which quickly became one of the composer’s most famous pieces.