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La Maman et la putain
1973 Drama / Romance
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Credits
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Director: Jean Eustache
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Script: Jean Eustache
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Photo: Pierre Lhomme
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Music: Mozart, Offenbach, Frederick Hollander, Michael Jary, Jon Lord, Georges Van Parys
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Cast: Bernadette Lafont (Marie),
Jean-Pierre Léaud (Alexandre),
Françoise Lebrun (Veronika),
Isabelle Weingarten (Gilberte),
Jacques Renard (Alexandre's Friend),
Jean-Noël Picq (Offenbach lover),
Jean Douchet (Man in Café),
Jean Eustache (Man in Sunglasses in Store)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 215 min; B&W
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Aka: The Mother and the Whore
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Summary
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?
Review
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
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