The film tells the story of a married couple who reflect on their twelve-year relationship while on a road trip from England to the French Riviera.

Two for the Road was a rare Hepburn picture where she did not wear a wardrobe designed by Hubert de Givenchy, as Donen wanted her to have a more conventional appearance.

The family consists of Mark's former girlfriend from the University of Chicago, Cathy Seligman, her husband Howard Maxwell-Manchester, and their young daughter Ruthie.

The Wallaces travel south with the Dalbrets and stay at the latter's villa in Ramatuelle, where Maurice introduces Mark to his Greek partner, Nikos Palamos.

In January 1965, Donen and Raphael flew to Switzerland to meet Hepburn at her home in Bürgenstock and try a second time to convince her to work on the film.

Zanuck gave the film $5 million to work with, and explained to Donen that the studio's 1966 Oscar budget would be dedicated to Doctor Dolittle.

[17] After seeing the film A Thousand Clowns, Donen decided on the spot to offer the parts of the American couple to William Daniels and Barbara Harris.

Four years earlier, Kathy's older brother, Thomas Chelimsky, had played the part of Jean-Louis Gaudel in Donen and Hepburn's previous collaboration, Charade.

"[22] Author Irwin Shaw, who visited the set, said of Hepburn, "she and Albie had this wonderful thing together, like a pair of kids with a perfect shorthand of jokes and references that closed out everybody else.

"[25] According to biographer Donald Spoto, when filming finished in early September 1966, Ferrer threatened his wife with divorce if she did not end the relationship.

After three days of coaxing her and denying her request for a body double, Donen got her to do the scene, albeit with two assistants waiting to pull her out after the shot.

The theme song he wrote for Donen was described as a "rather sad, rather hurt-sounding melody, trying to be redolent of the film characters' regrets but rather indulging his own.

In subsequent years, artists including Andy Williams, Peggy Lee, Pat Metheny, Dave Grusin, and Seth MacFarlane have recorded the theme.

Fox chose the theatre because of its past association with Donen films; Cover Girl, On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, and Charade had all premiered at Radio City.

In the New York World Journal Tribune, Judith Crist wrote, "Two for the Road is that rare thing, an adult comedy by and for grown-ups, bright, brittle and sophisticated, underlined by cogency and honest emotion.

And, far from coincidentally, it is a complex and beautifully made movie, eye-filling and engrossing with a 'new' (mod and non-Givenchy) Audrey Hepburn displaying her too-long-neglected depths and scope as an actress."

Time wrote, "abandoning the Givenchy school and the elfin cool, Audrey Hepburn is surprisingly good as a Virginia Woolf-cub who has earned her share of scars in the jungle war between the sexes.

Meanwhile, Rex Reed wrote that "Two for the Road is perhaps the best American movie of 1967," and that audiences would be rewarded by "two of the most brilliant performances–by Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney–ever captured on the screen."

Hollis Alpert in Saturday Review criticised the casting, saying "Miss Hepburn is handicapped during her more immature periods by the fact that she is now a distinctly aging ingenue," and "Finney seems too young to play a mature architect."

Variety described the movie as "a breezy trip through married life with Audrey Hepburn's superb performance carrying stodgy Albert Finney most of the way."

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and wrote, "this is a slick, entirely professional, very smooth movie – but it is just because Donen and his associates are seasoned craftsmen that they never stoop to the obvious.

[...] Two for the Road's kaleidoscope of liquid time and emotion blows our minds, gives us the sensation of life actually, painfully changing as we watch it.

Crowther wrote, "there are some precious moments of romantic charm in this bitter account of domestic discord amid surroundings that should inspire nothing but delight.

After Crowther called the film "commercial American trash," Donen dressed him down publicly by saying "as far as I'm concerned, you are nothing but an impossible son of a bitch.

"[48] One of Hepburn's biographers, Charles Higham, wrote that "the picture was to achieve an extraordinary level of emotional intensity, all the more remarkable because it was hidden in humour.

Audrey's portrayal of a range of emotions as the seemingly lighthearted Joanna Wallace betokened a striking advance for her as an actress, and this was perhaps her finest performance on the screen.

In one sequence in the south of France, as she ran tearfully through a garden to a swimming pool followed by Albert Finney's Mark Wallace, she was astonishingly open in her expression of personal pain.

"[49] Drew Casper said, "Raphael's dialogue is gorgeously crafted: sharply in character, witty, fecund with Pinteresque pauses and silences that mean as much as the words and are, above all, so touching.

[52] The "disc dress" designed by Paco Rabanne that Hepburn wears in the house party scene is owned by the Riverside Museum in Glasgow.

[53] The paste tiara she wore in the scene where Joanna and Mark return to the Dalbret house after the gala sold in 2017 at Christie's for GBP 43,750.