Some film lovers do have the tendency to skip French cinema. They think it’s usually about infidelity, referencing this and that, and lots of talking. They are accurate, but that’s what I love about them. They can be real, raw, and highly confronting, not just whimsical, lively, and satirical. Legendary director and editor Jean Eustache definitely understood the involving nature of adult relationships and their conflicts with his magnum opus, the 1973 masterpiece The Mother and the Whore, which was a real eye-opener for me.
Buy The Mother and the Whore Criterion Collection Blu-rayEustache’s penchant for risky realism highlights this sexually frank and confessional three-and-a-half-hour epic starring Jean-Pierre Leaud (beloved and equally divisive icon of the French New Wave) as the chauvinistic Alexandre, an unemployed intellect who wanders about, engaging in many conversations with various companions about political and philosophical topics ranging from film to monogamy and so on. He lives with his tempestuous girlfriend Marie (Bernadette Lafont) and begins an affair with the liberated Veronika (Francoise Lebrun). As the trio continues their obviously doomed threesome, the frustration grows and leads them all to their emotional and mental undoing.
Along with the film’s expansiveness and its deeply cutting truth, I had to take multiple breaks. The unbroken long takes and piercing (and often graphic) dialogue was perhaps too fresh, but its approach to the contradictions and revelations that love can often bring really impressed me. I also really enjoyed the feminism in it, where the film wasn’t just told from Alexandre’s viewpoint, but also those from both Marie’s and definitely Veronika’s (especially with Lebrun’s unsettling monologue near the end of the film). In many moments, they both call him on his bullshit and get give the what’s what, to the point where he doesn’t know what to think or say. I’m glad that Eustache let the women be fully realized, otherwise the film would have been too toxic, which Alexandre definitely is.
I’m really glad that Criterion made this film available. The 4K restoration is stunning and gives it new life, which it deserves. The supplements are also informative and engaging. They include a new interview with Lebrun; a new conversation with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin and writer Rachel Kushner; a program about the film’s restoration; a segment from the French television series Pour le cinema featuring Leburn, Eustache, Lafont, and Leaud; and a trailer. It also has a great new essay by critic Lucy Sante and a vintage introduction by Eustache.
Not many people will appreciate this brilliant, vulgar, and intimate landmark, especially because of its length, but that is the point. Life and love can be aimless, drawn out, and flawed. That’s the beauty of this film. It dares to go there, and it does it so flawlessly.
