La Maman et La Putain [The Mother and the Whore] **** (1973, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Lebrun) – Classic Movie Review 12,728

Director Jean Eustache’s 1973 French love triangle film La Maman et La Putain [The Mother and the Whore] is the last brilliant flowering of the 1960s French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), an intriguing curio of a straggler from an earlier golden era. It is Eustache’s first feature film and is considered his masterwork.

A tiny chamber piece told in endless chat and shot in grainy black and white images (shot by cinematographer Pierre Lhomme) at bizarre epic length (219  minutes) is a challenge to sit through, but it gives the equivalent effect of reading a doorstop novel and makes you feel like awarding yourself a prize at the end for having survived it.

Jean-Pierre Léaud is excellent as the charmingly dithering man hesitating between the two women in his ménage-à-trois, the ‘mother’ (Bernadette Lafont) and the ‘whore’ (Françoise Lebrun).

Quite brilliant in its very French 1970s way, it seems like it speaks the truth and reflects the reality. Apparently Eustache called on his own love story with the actress Françoise Lebrun for inspiration and ideas for the screenplay.

It was shot between May and July 1972.

Also in the cast are Isabelle Weingarten, Jacques Renard, Jean-Noël Picq and Jessa Darrieux.

Françoise Lebrun and Pierre Lhomme (1930-2019) both appear as themselves in the 2019 film Love Blooms [L’amour debout].

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,728

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com