La Maman et la putain (1973)

La Maman et la putain is a French romantic film drama first released in 1973, directed by Jean Eustache.  The film stars Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten and Jacques Renard.  It has also been released under the title: The Mother and the Whore.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Alexandre is an unemployed intellectual who, having no money of his own, sponges off his lover, Marie, with whom he lives.  A devotee of classical music and existentialist philosophy, Alexandre spends his days lost in thought or engaged in philosophical discussion with his long-haired student friends.  One day, he meets up with a former girlfriend, Gilberte, and asks if she will marry him.  When she refuses, Alexandre turns his attention to another girl, a stranger, whom he sees sitting alone in a café.  When they meet up subsequently, the girl, Veronika, takes a liking to the talkative young philosopher, and it is a short while before they are in bed together.  When Alexandre’s other lover, Marie, finds out, she is angry, but still attaches herself to her toy-boy.  Soon, Alexandre discovers that he has fallen in love with two women, both of whom are deeply in love with him, and both of whom are jealous of the other woman.  How is he to resolve this impossible dilemma?



One of the last great flourishes of the French New Wave, La Maman et la putain is the one great film from director Jean Eustache, a potent and absorbing work featuring three very different characters with very contrasting approaches to life and love. Truthful, intelligent, sometimes witty, it is an engaging film which evokes the essence of Nouvelle Vague cinema, with all its poetry, daring and honesty. The fact that Eustache should choose to kill himself less than a decade after making this film adds a dark and sorrowful footnote to what is by any standards a masterpiece.

The film features two icons of the French New Wave: Jean-Pierre Léaud – best known as Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s Les 400 coups (1959) – and Bernadette Lafont.    Jean-Pierre Léaud is magnificent as the cultivated layabout Alexandre, endlessly spouting empty philosophical discourses as if his life depended on it.   Bernadette Lafont is Alexandre’s bouncy sugar-mummy, giving a terrific performance that alternates between bruised tenderness and fiery jealousy.  In contrast to her two charismatic co-stars, Françoise Lebrun is far more understated, and consequently more enigmatic. Initially demure and charming, we begin to see the frustration in her character’s situation and, as the film develops, she begins to develop a complex dual personality – a woman looking for a stable relationship with a committed husband in one instance, then a drunken slut out for some gratuitous hedonism in the next.  At least Marie, Alexandre’s other lover, is more consistent.  Alexandre’s inability to choose between the two women is brilliantly explored, with the emotional impact fully achieved through some moody and surprisingly melancholic performances which really do manage to draw us into the characters’ inner-souls.

© James Travers 2004

Write a review for this film...


What do you think of this film?

More French Drama
More French Romance
Recent DVD releases