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France · 2010
1h 31m
Director Emmanuel Laurent
Starring Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Antoine de Baecque, Isild Le Besco
Genre Documentary
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Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were from different sides of the tracks: the former was a member of the Swiss haute-bourgeois while the latter was a poor reform school boy. Despite their differences, these filmmaking rebels became great friends as they shook up mainstream film in the French New Wave. Their careers, their friendship, and their falling out is carefully detailed through rare archival footage, exclusive interviews, and scenes from their greatest films.
Director Emmanuel Laurent extends de Baecque's essay with clips from Truffaut-Godard films (diminished in HD) and, rather than new interviews with contemporaries, footage of an attractive actress (Isild Le Besco) flipping through old photos and looking pensively at the entrance of the old Cinémathèque Française.
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
Two in the Wave honors that collaboration by carefully recounting its details and arguing for its significance. The films of Truffaut and Mr. Godard stand or fall by themselves, but together they made history.
Laurent's brushstrokes always feel a little too broad to capture the finer details of the legendary New Wavers, but some fascinating archive footage saves his documentary from missing the mark altogether.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
For the uninitiated, this fun French documentary detailing the camaraderie and division between filmmakers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard reveals a time when "the cinema" was something to get excited about and literally fight over.
The film blows up a minor aspect of the New Wave to foolishly apocalyptic proportions, substituting gossip for gospel.
The demoralizing slide of the relationship between Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, from artistic comrades-in-arms during the thrilling creation of the nouvelle vague to name-calling enemies from the early '70s onward, is charted in overly academic and constricted fashion in Two in the Wave.
An interesting but flawed look at the birth of the French New Wave.
Boxoffice Magazine by Wade Major
It's certainly a story worth telling, but hardly as pivotal and all-encompassing as they would like to believe, all of which makes the effort far more exhausting than it ever should have been.
The documentary is primarily a work of whimsy.
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