The Mother and the Whore

Jean Eustache obliquely puts on trail the self-reflexive cool of the early New Wave films.

As a record of a kind of everyday Parisian life, the film is superb. We think of the cafes of Paris as hotbeds of fiery philosophical debate, but more often, I imagine, they are just like this: people talking, flirting, posing, drinking, smoking, telling the truth and lying, while waiting to see if real life will ever begin.

The trio’s breezy erotic sophistication masks an urban populism that’s as artistically fertile as it is politically risky; their domestic disasters have the feel and tone of epic clashes.

For anyone who wants to see pure cinema, it should be an experience both wrenching and inspiring. [22 Jan 1999, p.H]

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE captures a sense of realism rare in any type of film, bringing us deep beneath the surface of the characters' exteriors.

It probes the attitudes of French men and women toward love, sex, and promiscuity through the story of a self-centered intellectual who strays from his middle-class girlfriend to pursue a nurse with unconventional ideas about relationships. Jean-Pierre Leaud gives one of the most memorable performances in his remarkable career. [19 Dec 1997, p.13]

Watching The Mother and the Whore, you find that you're back in the movie-sludge of the nineteen-fifties, when a number of mediocre French films focused on sub-Sagan characters: numb, semi-paralyzed creatures who hardly had the calories to drag themselves through the day.