Before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, before Blue Valentine, there was the original gangsta of horror love stories, Two For the Road. Though, in 1967, Frederic Raphael’s deftly scathing screenplay was billed as a “comedy drama,” to watch it in the present is to recognize many of the faults in relationships that have led to so many opting for gender fluidity, genderqueerness, non-monogamy, etc. In the decade of the late 60s, a girl like Joanna (Audrey Hepburn, in the last role for which she would be billed as a sexual object of desire) is hard to come by. That is to say: virginal, yet sexually suggestive, ribald, yet staid. And, despite the scarcity of her kind, aspiring architect Mark Wallace (Albert Finney, in rare fuckable form) encounters her as she’s journeying through France with her choir group while on a trip/vision quest of his own.
Ah, but before that, we must start in the present–an aspect of the Stanley Donen (no stranger to collabs with Hepburn, i.e. Funny Face and Charade) directed film that made it so avant-garde for its time: using a disjointed narrative structure for a romantic “comedy.” But, like any tale of woe told well, we must always start at the end, sometimes known as the present, during which Mark and Joanna have reached the zenith of their emotional stalemate in terms of loving each other, or rather, perhaps not really loving each other but just going through the motions. On the way to one of Mark’s most financially generous clients’ homes, Maurice (Claude Dauphin), Joanna gets to reminiscing about the first time they saw one another after driving to the airport to get their 965 Mercedes 230SL roadster (product placement used to be so much more glamorous, no?) to a suitable location for driving to St. Tropez–ah, the problems of the upper class. As Mark is duped into believing he’s forgotten his passport once again as their flight commences, it reminds Joanna of how he was scrambling to find it when they first encountered one another on a boat coming into Southern France as well. Her ability to discover it throughout their tumultuous relationship is what leads Mark to conclude, “If there’s one thing I really despise it’s an indispensable woman.”
And, to be sure, Joanna has been indispensable in many ways–but only because she’s made herself that way. It becomes clear throughout the film that had she not inserted herself into Mark’s life, he might be just as well without her. For he has been staunchly anti-marriage from the outset, ranting at one point on their first road-based journey together, “The trouble with women is they try to label ya. Put ya in a pigeonhole. What they don’t realize is, the only thing that really fits in a pigeonhole is a pigeon. Marriage is all they ever think about. I’ve got no intention of gettin’ married for at least forty years… I thought in America they had broken through the inhibitions barrier and it was all one long sex feast, but what [the American woman] wants is what her grandmother wanted: your head stuffed and mounted on the living room wall.”
Joanna listens to it all blithely with a smile, biding her time and waiting, knowing full well that she’s got Mark right where she wants him in her web. Because a girl doesn’t simply give up her virginity for nothing without a little bit of a lifelong contract in return (and this is, in fact, one of the most surprising aspects of Two For the Road, that a virgin still exists in the “swingin'” 60s).
Yet all this passion and desperation to keep their love alive at the outset gives way to the initial scene of the film, during which Mark and Joanna pass by a freshly wed couple getting into the back of a car with stoic, resigned expressions. Joanna comments, “They don’t look very happy.” Mark snaps back, “Why should they? They just got married.” The duo’s constant judgment of other married couples at all phases of their own relationship is always tinged with a tongue-in-cheek sort of “but that’s not really us–we know we’re miserable and we can change it anytime we want to” vibe. The problem is, sniping repartee that was once cute and endearing in the infancy of a flirtation ultimately transforms into just plain verbal abuse. This is perhaps why the genre of film noir couldn’t sustain itself in the modern era–women’s rights groups would be all over it calling out the emotional injury of such dialogue exchanged between a man and “his girl” on a constant basis.
Once Joanna successfully gets her hooks in despite Mark’s claims of having his eyes solely on the prize of architecture on this trip–no distractions needed, he has a “schedule”–she is only bound to be perpetually disappointed by Mark’s inability to change into the man she thought he could once she got him to love her. Ultimately, however, she comes to believe that Mark doesn’t really know what love is, so consumed is he with his career, a narcissistic obsession that at one point manifests in the offhand comment while taking pictures of a church, “Nobody knows the names of the men who made it. To make something as exquisite as this without wanting to smash your stupid name all over it.”
And as for his ceaseless sexual appetite, Joanna comes to determine, “It wouldn’t matter who I was, would it?” after Mark tries to deflect one of their arguments with sex. And, in truth, it does often seem like Mark is just looking for a hole to fill, as is the case while ironically juxtaposed against a tender letter written to Joanna voiced over as he has cheap and easy one-off dalliance with a fellow traveler on the road during their marriage. And it’s a union that increasingly begs the question asked by Mark, “Why do we keep on with this farce? Is it bloody worth it, is it?” Joanna, hopelessly committed, returns, “Yes it is worth it, sometimes. Only not now.” The tint of derision in their relationship is, after all, only to be expected after so much time and so long being with the same person. Hence, the foreshadowing exchange at a hotel room together, during which Mark demands of a silent couple sitting together as they ascend the stairs, “What kind of people sit like that without saying anything?” “Married people,” Joanna offers, as though to say, “It will never be us though,” in the plucky naivete of her first love blindness before going upstairs with Mark to lose her virginity to him.
Her reverence for Mark at the beginning is in contrast to the antipathy she has for him as the novelty of their nuptials fades. For as much criticism as Joanna gives Mark about being at the constant beck and call of Maurice, he throws it back in her face that she wouldn’t be as happy without all the material things he’s afforded her. For instance, when Maurice asks, “Your wife is happy?” Mark quips, “It doesn’t take much to make her happy. A villa, swimming pool, champagne, simple things.” While the root of their problem might be Mark’s lack of availability to Joanna, by the same token, it is Joanna’s lust for the finer things that have also, in part, led them to their state of contempt for one another. That, and Joanna’s insistence on a child–a daughter named Caroline–that Mark never wanted. Particularly after taking a road trip with Joanna, his ex-girlfriend, Cathy (Eleanor Bron), her new husband, Howie (William Daniels), and their daughter, Ruthie (Gabrielle Middleton), an impetuous and spoiled girl that spills the beans on Cathy and Howie’s real opinion on Joanna by questioning in front of all of them, “Why did mom say she was a suburban English nobody?” In point of fact, it is Joanna’s decided devotion to the suburban lifestyle she was raised in that leads to her lack of satisfaction with a life so clearly built on the endless need to fill it with more: more things, more excitement, more adventure–always more, more, more. This is likely why she seeks more in the form of a serious affair with David (Georges Descrières), the brother of Maurice’s wife, Françoise (Nadia Gray).
Intuiting something amiss when David introduces himself the day prior, a knell-like sound tolls as Mark approaches the table the next morning to find Joanna having coffee with the man she’s fallen in love with all of the sudden, adding to the surreal, experimental vibe of the film with a shot that features a warped image of her as it freeze frames on the new couple. Asking David for a moment alone with his wife, Mark nervously queries, “Are you in love?” Joanna sheepishly responds, “Yes.” Incredulous, Mark probes, “After only one day? I see.” Joanna offers, “I’m like that.” Mark snaps, “Are you? How many times has this happened before you being like that?” Joanna wearily states, “Twice. You and David.” In disbelief, Mark adds, “I thought I was going to last a lifetime.” Feeling remorse for how cruelly she’s hurt him, Joanna tries to explain, “I never meant it to happen. We suddenly found that we…” “Got on?” Mark finishes snidely. But that’s the thing about new relationships: one always “gets on” effortlessly in the beginning. The true test is still feeling at least vaguely simpatico as time passes.
The acerbic tone of Two For the Road and its commentary on the pratfalls of monogamy are punctuated from the get-go by Maurice Binder’s fraught opening title sequence (it gives Saul and Elaine Bass work on Alfred Hitchcock’s title sequences a run for their money) paired with Henry Mancini’s original, melancholic composition of “Two For the Road.” It sets the stage for a romance that no amount of traveling excitement can dilute from the very plain fact that to stay with the same person “forever” is consistently going to end in more than just a little bit of torment, particularly if you’re always seeking to replicate the ardent sentiments of “the beginning,” with sniping reminders like, “There was a time you were glad to be married to me.” By the conclusion, however, Mark has to admit somewhere inside of himself that, yes, he still is glad to be married to Joanna. She is, after all, an indispensable woman. Most evidently in that black PVC trouser suit.
