Film: La Maman et La Putain
Director: Jean Eustache
Country: France
Released: May 1973
Runtime: 219 minutes
Genre: Drama
Studio: Les Films du Losange
Influenced: Truffaut, Richard Linklater, Olivier Assayas, Noah Baumbach, Arnaud Desplechin
1973 was a stellar year for cinema, not least because of the release of Jean Eustache's La Maman et La Putain, possibly the film with the best dialogue ever delivered on screen. The scene where Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) first meets Veronika (Françoise Lebrun) in the café and talks about the "night beauty" of humans and Paris (trimmed of the fat of traffic) is so eloquent and profound that I felt like I'd entered into a higher realm of human intelligence. No film, not even Amélie (2001), celebrates Paris in such a way, taking in landmark cafés and restaurants (Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, Le Train Bleu) and sights (Jardin du Luxembourg, the Seine, the bustling intellectual quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Prés).
The film's minimalistic style – the lengthy, continuous shots; the non-dramatised, real-time progression; the focus on dialogue – gives the viewer a sense of experiencing the story up close, a distinctive feature of Nouvelle Vague cinema that Eustache took to the extreme. However, La Maman et La Putain is also out of step with the French New Wave to some extent, most notably its considerable runtime of nearly 4 hours, though Eustache was outdone by fellow French director Jacques Rivette with Out 1 (1971). Two elements have also added to the aura around this film: the near impossibility of finding an official copy of it on DVD or Blu-ray, and the director's suicide at the age of 42. Eustache broke away from traditional romantic narrative arcs in La Maman et La Putain, and the characters' complicated relationships and emotional explorations were pioneering for their depth and complexity.
« Alexandre que vous êtes beau, que vous êtes con, que je vous déteste »
« I have the impression you're not bad in bed? »
« That depends on the day, and the opinion »
Set in post-1968 Paris, the narrative follows a love triangle between a young, unemployed intellectual named Alexandre, his girlfriend Marie and the nurse Veronika, with whom Alexandre starts an affair. Eustache made the actors deliver their lines without changes or improvisation, such was his faith in the screenplay (its dialogue distilled from conversations the director had himself at various parties and cafés in Paris). Having his characters speak so frankly about sex was highly innovative for the time, and controversial. Veronika in particular was a pioneering female character on screen, especially the way she talks about how women can't have sexual freedom without being shamed as a slut (or "whore", a reference to the film's title).
Alexandre is an obsessive talker, a pseudo-intellectual who loves to hear himself expound on everything, from mundane jokes to personal fantasies, with references to Marcel Proust, Robert Bresson and Jean-Paul Sartre. Marie is an independent and modern woman who runs a boutique and enjoys her freedom, although she desires a deeper commitment from Alexandre. One of the most significant moments is Veronika's lengthy monologue toward the end of the film where she dissects her past relationships and sexual encounters, offering a brutally honest and raw perspective on her own self-worth, which defies traditional female portrayals in cinema. In addition to the dialogue, Eustache used classical music in the film, notably Jacques Offenbach's La Belle Hélène and Mozart's Requiem, together with pop music and French chansons. The film won the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and remains a challenging and thought-provoking exploration of love, sex and the human condition.
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