THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE

Try to imagine a film set in early 70s Paris which definitively distills the emotional changes wrought by the May 1968 events, while making only passing reference to them. Or an amalgam of the cinema of Eric Rohmer and John Cassavetes. These evocations and more apply to Jean Eustache’s THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE.

When it was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, Eustache’s epic, extraordinary feature divided audiences, and continues to do so. The film is a heartbroken account of sexual and cultural politics, disengagement and despair, seemingly random but also carefully constructed - a work with a complicated relationship to authenticity, nostalgia, memory, and longing.

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE is also mordantly funny, a self-flagellating autobiographical epic of rapier-sharp dueling dialogue. Jean-Pierre Léaud is all dandyish flair as Alexandre, a hangdog layabout who becomes involved in a three-way affair with two women: live-in lover Bernadette Lafont and morose nurse Françoise Lebrun. Eustache’s cri de couer is a caustically humorous, blisteringly humane and intellectually rich film that generates passionate new partisans whenever it screens.

“A classic that remains as burningly alive and shocking today as it was in 1973.” - Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

“Jean Eustache is a genius. THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE is THE RULES OF THE GAME of our generation.” - Philippe Garrel