Few films are as bittersweet romantic as the comic road movie TWO FOR THE ROAD starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn. The two play star-crossed lovers traveling throughout Europe. Their honeymoon brings them to a country hotel in France, where they observed older couples speechlessly dining together.
“What kind of people don’t speak to each other.” Audrey asks in a haze of smitten amusement.
“Married people.” Albert Finney answered with a vow to never be like their aged compatriots. Of course within the movie’s plotline the two evolved into despicable people riven by greed. The ending had them abandoning the ways of the flesh and driving off into the scenery to save their love.
There was never a sequel, however years later a British TV host interviewed Albert Finney and asked, “You’ve been married six times. What was the similarity between your wives?”
“They all left me.” Albert Finney quickly quipped, fully understanding that some men are not made by the women behind them, but by those who have left them behind.
That last line is from James Steele, America’s leading pseudo-intellectual.
He speaks.
He lives.
He left no one behind without a thought to see them one more time.