Love on the Run is a cinematic valentine from Francois Truffaut to Antoine Doinel — a character he has developed on the screen since 1958. The protagonist is getting a divorce from Christine (Claude Jade), the girl he wooed in Stolen Kisses and was uncomfortably married to in Bed and Board. He's now in a relationship with Sabine (Dorothee), a women he met reconstructing a torn photograph discarded by one of her previous lovers. The final piece in Antoine's love triangle comes in a chance encounter with Colette (Marie-France Pisier), the girl he was infatuated with in Love at Twenty. She's now a lawyer who is sharp enough to see Antoine's flaws as a womanizer. Colette wasn't impressed with him in her youth and she refuses to fall under his spell now.
The three-sided look at the love life of a skirt-chaser is further amplified by glimpses of Antoine's strange relationship with his sexually loose mother in The 400 Blows. This movie is sure to appeal to Truffaut's fans. It comes across as an engaging puzzle putting the pieces of Antoine's life into a whole. Unfortunately for Love on the Run, the director worked through most of the same thematic material in The Man Who Loved Women. Yet for many, even recycled Truffaut is better than no Truffaut at all in 1979.