Two for the Road (1967)

Fulfilling my promise to my dad, I made sure that the next film we saw in a theater didn't involve superheroes. Indeed, there's very little action at all. OK, it wasn't my idea: He noticed that this was showing at AFI and suggested it. The main draw for both of us? Lovely Audrey Hepburn.

The first spoken lines are from Joanna (Hepburn) and Mark (Albert Finney) respectively: "They don't look very happy." "Why should they be? They just got married." After that, we're treated to a series of flashbacks, including how Joanna and Mark first met, their parenthood of a young girl, and (sigh) their mutual adultery. Most of the memories pertain to travels in Europe, primarily France and then Italy.

Lest you think this a more mobile variation on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I assure you that the duo spends about half the movie in love or at least close to it. The biggest recurring obstacles are Mark's job, as an architect, putting demands on where and how he spends his time and Joanna's tendency to change her mind about what she wants or is OK with. Other stressors, not always straining the romance, include tight finances, an unreliable jalopy, and rides with an obnoxious family whose spoiled little girl soon goes from cute to Veruca Salt-in-training. Truth be told, even the good times of the main relationship tend to show Mark as generally bitter, which may be partly why I got the mistaken impression that he was a bit older. (Hepburn was seven years Finney's senior.) I'm not entirely sure what Joanna initially saw in Mark, but unlike in Journey to Italy, I could understand why they kept reconciling.

To make it all the more of an emotional roller coaster (well, more like an emotional car on a pothole-filled road), the film shows a lot of scenes out of chronological order, timed for extra irony. I had an easier time piecing Memento together. That hardly matters, since the events are largely episodic, but it has a way of making the 111 minutes feel longer. I looked at my watch and was surprised we still had more than a half-hour to go.

Probably the film's greatest strength is in its dialog. Those starting words aren't the only quotable ones. I suspect that this is where we get the wisecrack that the people who sit together without talking are married people. The film got an Oscar nod for story and screenplay written directly for the screen (yeah, that specific category was abandoned long ago).

Other strengths include rare non-musical direction by Stanley Donen and especially musical composition by Henry Mancini. The latter said it was both his most difficult and favorite work. My only complaint is that the theme played during the opening credits sounds like it ought to be sung rather than purely instrumental.

To call it heartwarming is a stretch. Funny? Every so often. But it should be worth watching for a certain visceral relatability that doesn't reach the excesses of The Out-of-Towners.