Two for the Road

Plot synopsis:
Now a successful and wealthy architect, Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) and his wife Joanna (Jo) Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) fly their white 1965 Mercedes 230SL roadster to Northern France in order to drive to Saint-Tropez to celebrate the completion of a building project for a client, Maurice. Tensions between the couple are evident, and as they journey south they both remember and discuss several past journeys along the same road.
The earliest memory is their first meeting on a ferry crossing in 1954, when Mark was travelling alone and Joanna was part of a girls' choir. They meet again when Joanna's choir bus goes off the road and Mark helps get them back on the road. When the other girls get chickenpox, Joanna and Mark unexpectedly wind up hitchhiking south together.
The next story involves the two newlyweds travelling with Mark's ex-girlfriend Cathy Manchester (Eleanor Bron), her husband (William Daniels) and daughter Ruth 'Ruthie' (Gabrielle Middleton) from the USA. Ruthie is not given any limits, and her behaviour frustrates Mark and Jo. Eventually Ruthie reveals the unkind descriptions of Joanna her parents have made in private. At this point Mark and Joanna decide to travel alone.
One scene depicts Mark and Joanna dining in a restaurant during a particularly strained period in their marriage. They are not speaking at all. Joanna looks around the restaurant and asks Mark, "What kind of people can sit there without a word to say to each other?" Mark replies, quite sullenly, "Married people!"
Next the pair are seen driving an MG which begins to have exhaust troubles, finally catching on fire. On this journey Joanna announces that she is pregnant. They also meet the wealthy Maurice Dalbret (Claude Dauphin) and his wife Françoise (Nadia Gray). Maurice becomes a generous but demanding client for Mark.
The next story shows them travelling with their young daughter Caroline (Kathy Chelimsky).
In another episode, Mark is travelling alone and has a fling with another motorist. The fling is shown to be fleeting and unserious in nature. Later, Joanna has an affair with Françoise's brother David (Georges Descrières), which is portrayed as much more serious than Mark's and threatens to end the marriage. However, while Joanna dines with David, they witness a couple eating together without saying a word. David asks offhandedly, "What kind of people can sit there without a word to say to each other?" Joanna replies excitedly, "Married people!" and, realizing she misses Mark despite their faded passion, runs back to him.
At the end of the film, the Wallaces manage to end their long-term relationship to Maurice and find a new client in Rome. They honestly analyse the fears and insecurities which have plagued them throughout the film. Finally, they cross the border from France into Italy. This is new ground for them as well as for the audience, signalling a move beyond the old issues into a more mature future.

Tags: flashback

Review:
From the opening notes of Henry Mancini's evocative score (personally I think it's his best work) to the end where the main characters drive off into Italy after some verbal sparring, this movie still provides the same pleasure it did when I first saw it on TV in the early seventies.
"Two for the Road" is a time capsule of Carnaby Street fashion and French new wave scene juxtaposition, but it remains timeless in its emotionally piercing view of marriage and in the beguiling presence of Audrey Hepburn.
His dialogue is sharp and insightful, as he has the main characters often repeat one another for the sake of getting a different meaning from the same line of dialogue.As Joanna and Mark Wallace, Hepburn and Albert Finney get to live out more than a decade in their characters' lives from initial meeting to near-divorce.
The way that Mark and Joanna's relationship is displayed through the time changes is excellent, and while you'd think that keeping track of the time would be difficult, it's actually quite simple if you look at the hair and the attitudes of the couple.
you actually see her having fun in this picture.She plays Joanna Wallace who with her husband played beautifully by Albert Finney reflect on the good times and the bad times of their twelve-year marriage.This film is must see because it goes beyond the happy ending and into actually imitating life where marriage is not always perfect.
For this time of filmmaking it must have been extremely experimental doing a movie this way.There are times where Finney and Hepburn are unlikeable but even then it's hard not to root for this couple to somehow resolve their long term marriage.
He also gets excellent performances from all his actors, especially Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.At the end we appreciate this marriage so much more because we've seen all the work it has taken and learn that "bitch" and "bastard" can really be terms of endearment..
Eight more years would pass until she finally agreed to do 'Robin and Marian."  Well Audrey Hepburn is my all-time favorite movie star.
If you're going to draw your career to a close, and I'm not sure she realized this was it, no actress could do better than 'Two for the Road,' and 'Wait Until Dark."  Audrey was such a natural screen presence, and with 'Two for the Road,' she had a wonderfullyhandsome leading man in Albert Finney (there were strong rumors of a relationship during this film), and completely at ease with a director she had successfully worked with in the past--Stanley Donen.
The chemistry she has with Albert Finney is so wonderful, thanks mostly to the fact that for a rare time in her career she was given a male love interest who was close to her own age (Finney was actually 7 years YOUNGER than Hepburn).
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.
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.
The film retells the story of a marriage (whose participants are Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) in a somewhat random order, telling the stories of their various vacations, from when they meet to when other lovers come between them.
The acting is alright, and the charm of the Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney keep this movie watchable, but overall it is sub-par stuff..
I was looking forward to this film.Audrey Hepburn is just Audrey Hepburn, the great Albert Finney was returning to films at that time known the world over as the star of 'Tom Jones'.Finney hadn't done a film for two years (since the weird and disappointing Night Must Fall); it seemed that he was waiting for a script good enough to lure him away from the theatre where his heart really lay.So we've got Hepburn, a great charismatic star; Finney, a great actor; the assumption of a good script and on top of that, the two had an affair during the making of the film and people have often talked about the chemistry between the two of them.Many romantic films are spoiled by a lack of chemistry between the stars, however Bogart and Bacall had a chemistry mirroring their off-screen affair that became legendary.
Despite rumours that for Hepburn their affair was much more than just a fling, there is absolutely no chemistry at all between her and Albert Finney.However, the film's biggest flaw is the God-awful, smart arse, gimmicky script that is so dated it's untrue.This was obviously made at a time when unimaginative dialogue where one character offers a slight variation on what the other character has just said was clearly seen as sharp and witty.Example:Finney (on seeing a miserable couple): That's marriage for you.Hepburn: That's marriage for them.Finney: That's marriage full stop.In a word,...
I didn't care for it when I originally saw it, and there as nothing in viewing again to change my opinion about the film.The the best aspect then was the film's locations/scenery - and today that remains true; but now it is probably better, since the scenery is still interesting, and has an added "nostalgic/period" component as well.Sorry, but Audrey Hepburn was never the favorite of mine she was for most others.
TWO FOR THE ROAD is an authentic road movie, with opening credits of miscellaneous traffic signs bode the marital turbulence of a couple, the architect Mark Wallace (Finney) and his wife Joanna (Hepburn), who has been married for twelve years, and through the haphazard narrative jump-cuts, as the title suggests, the film presents them in a continuously mobile fashion, mostly in flashbacks, whether they are hitchhiking, carpooling with another married couple (including a fast-forwarding sight-seeing in Chantilly), or later they can afford to travel on their own, their trips in the magnificent European land evokes an evident whiff of lyricism intermingled with their personal romances and crises.
Directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, and enabled by Frederic Raphael's wickedly astringent script, with golden maxim like "Marriage is when a woman asks a man to take off his pajamas because she wants to send it to the laundry." or "I still want a child, I just don't want that child."; and more strikingly, Donen discards the traditional linear account, instead he disarrays the over-one-decade time-span with sharp editing to hop erratically onto their various en route encounters and happenings, the film essays a full spectrum appraisal of what could happen during a relationship, from the budding romance, the unrestrained passion, the blithe squabbling alters into the bitter snide, the fatigue of bringing up a child, the extramarital affairs and finally spilling the beans of their dissatisfactions with blatant betrayal.
TWO FOR THE ROAD makes good use of the irrevocable fluidity of road-trip as a metaphor of one's tumultuous marriage journey, and it also shows audience a different Audrey Hepburn under the same dignified decorum, another good reason that the film should not be obliterated from a younger age group..
On the plus side: Jackie Bisset in one of her earliest roles, so gorgeous that she makes the enchanting Audrey look like a scare-crow plus more costume changes per minute of screen time than have ever been tracked by a leading lady in a major feature film.
Two For The Road was the last and least of the films that Audrey Hepburn did with Stanley Donen.
It's a matter of taste, but I don't think it is anywhere as good as either Funny Face or Charade.The film is the story of the marriage of Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn told in jigsaw puzzle style, disjointed at different select times of their marriage and what they go through.
Workaholic architect Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) and his wife Jo (Audrey Hepburn) are unhappily married.
I would hardly call the status of Hepburn and Finney's relationship in the end as love.The film is honest and difficult for some to watch and, I think, very realistic, but Audrey Hepburn love story it is not!.
Two great performers here show how it's done: they make it look easy, but this film's intelligent, bittersweet script and its inventive, flawless interplay among flashbacks and and flash-forwards could not have been easy for Hepburn and Finney to have managed; kudos to Donen for his masterful direction.
And it's mawkish too, with a reassuring happy end (I imagine that at that time a big studio like Fox didn't want to co-produce a movie about marriage problems without a good ending...) "Two for the road", compared to contemporary films, shows also much modesty in the dialogues -hints to sexual problems are very very shy...!
The story is a good one and the lead characters are played by two of the great actors.This is a somewhat unusual film for Audrey Hepburn who we are use to seeing not make mistakes and always being or seeming to be so happy.
But through their trips ( the movie is shown in a series of road trips over ten years) we learn a lot about their characters, and love as it is in real life.
After all her great movies in the 50's, then Breakfast at Tiffanys, Charade, and My Fair Lady, she was indeed on top.But I am not one of them, and, although I like the three aforementioned films, I have no undying devotion to Ms. Hepburn.So I watch this film with an arm's length perspective and the  film is weak, and Audrey Hepburn is terribly miscast-she was 37 years old at the time of the filming, and in some scenes is expected to play a college-girl.
Despite two agreeable stars (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) and Christopher Challis' attractive location shooting, this is actually a very slight if occasionally witty romantic comedy-drama (courtesy of screenwriter Frederic Raphael) tricked out by fashionably flashy direction.
It is also the most adult-ish film of hers, because it deals with so many issues about marriage.Audrey was rumoured to have an affair with Albert Finney during the making of this movie, and I think maybe it shows because their on screen chemistry is pretty good.
Better still, Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn are in their prime and in love for real when they made this.
Was made around the time when movies started changing for the (much) better.Finney has a hilarious line when he says: "Women always try to pigeon-hole you; but the only thing that fits into a pigeon-hole is a pigeon." Audrey Hepburn is her usual dietary self, even though in one scene, quite ironically, she hollers for food: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!" she exclaims, adding something about wanting a hamburger.
Film basically deconstructs in non-linear fashion the relationship between Joanna (Hepburn) and Mark Wallace (Finney).
Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) and Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) have been married for ten years but are now having troubles.
The story is still alive and doesn't change, because men are still men and women are still women.What I want to say is that this film is a real exercise of love understanding and how problems can be solved when love exists.Sometimes bitter, always sincere and perfectly performances, (great Audrey and an even better Albert Finney), makes believe in art inmortality..
Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney are a married couple contemplating their life together in "Two for the Road," a 1967 film directed by Stanley Donen.
Hepburn and Finney are Joanna and Mark Wallace who remember the various road trips they've taken together and see them as signposts for their marriage - when they first met, first fell in love, dissatisfaction, infidelity, and disintegration.
The assorted car trips are shown as colliding with one another - Joanna and Mark in a car arguing in the present; then suddenly on a trip with the Manchesters (William Daniels and Eleanor Bron) and their hideous bad seed daughter mid-marriage; then Finney flirting with a young woman (Jacqueline Bisset, in her film debut) as he and Joanna ride on a bus in earlier days after their car breaks down.This is an often humorous and poignant story of two people who love each other but after so many years of hurts, of ups and downs, wonder if it's worth going on together.
It's rare to see a good film like that, a great love story, a 1967 movie that could be a blockbuster right now.
I always liked Stanley Donen-Audrey Hepburn movies, Charade, Funny Face.
Intentionally presented in fast forward and rewind modes to previous time-frame of situations/memories of various eventful moments and occasions in their relationship.These episodes were all somehow linked by specific cars/vehicle models the characters were in and the attire/fashion they were wearing, providing clues and suggesting the time period in their life together.The story is about Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna (Audrey Hepburn), their marriage, love, and courtship  essentially showing how a married couple could have been or not so.Music score was by Henry Mancini (`Breakfast At Tiffany's' -- Moon River).
A couple (Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn) in the south of France non-sequentially spin down the highways of infidelity in their troubled ten-year marriage.Apparently the story is that Audrey Hepburn was either going to get an Oscar nomination for this film or for her work in "Wait Until Dark", and it went to the latter.
Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn are transcendent as Mark and Joanna.
Solid, incisive, non-linear look at the genesis, progression, stagnation and dissolution of a relationship; invariably it's going to get a bit plodding and repetitive, so the film relies on the chops and chemistry of the always-quality Albert Finney and the always-lovely Audrey Hepburn, and for the most part, they deliver.
An American couple, played to perfection by Eleanor Bron and William Daniels, and their daughter, Ruthie, who travel with the Mark and Joanna on one trip, are the film's comedy relief.
"Two for the Road" was the third film that Stanley Donen directed Audrey Hepburn.
It helps she and her co-star, Albert Finney, seem to be having the time of their lives.Joanna and Mark meet on the road while vacationing in France.
Needless to say, they prove to be too much for Joanna and Mark.Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney show an easy chemistry in all their scenes.
I guess I really am a sentimental guy down deep.The movie is about the love life and marriage of Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.
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.
Wonderful memories of a young and virile Albert Finney and the late Audrey Hepburn as well.This is one film where the use of flashbacks does not work.
Two For The Road is directed by Stanley Donen and stars Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn and Eleanor Bron.
Eventually they fall in love and begin a relationship and get married.This film is a funny and at times poignant and moving look at the highs and lows of marriage.
Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney play a couple who essentially argue and love each other constantly through a two-hour road trip film through their lives and the French countryside.
It stars Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn.Written by Frederic Raphael, the story is told in a non-linear fashion, with scenes from the latter stages of the relationship put together with those from its beginning, often leaving the viewer to interpret what has intervened, which is sometimes revealed in later scenes.It was directed by Stanley Donen.
This is one of the most enduring films of all-time.Despite its initial release back in 1967,many viewers will still find this movie a pleasure to watch primarily due to the great chemistry between Audrey Hepburn,which is considered to be probably one of her most realistic and resonant screen roles and Albert Finney.
Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron and William Daniels do their best.In viewing the movie recently I felt it may have seemed dated which is not true of Donen's other movies.