The Mother and the Whore
| The Mother and the Whore | |
|---|---|
 Film poster of The Mother and the Whore |
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| Directed by | Jean Eustache |
| Produced by | Vincent Malle Bob Rafelson |
| Written by | Jean Eustache |
| Starring | Bernadette Lafont Jean-Pierre Léaud Françoise Lebrun |
| Cinematography | Pierre Lhomme |
| Editing by | Denise de Casabianca Jean Eustache |
| Release date(s) | May 1973 Cannes Film Festival |
| Running time | 219 min |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
The Mother and the Whore (French: La Maman et la Putain) is a 1973 French film directed by Jean Eustache. Examing the relationship between three characters in a love triangle, it was Eustache's first feature film and is considered his masterpiece.
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[edit] Plot
The film focuses on three twenty-somethings in an unconventional love triangle in Paris during the summer of 1972. Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is an unemployed young man involved with both a live-in girlfriend Marie (Bernadette Lafont) and the Polish nurse Veronika (Françoise Lebrun). He had picked up Veronika at a café after an unsuccessful reconciliation with a former love, Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten). With Veronika, he begins a desultory affair. Although Marie affirms her indifference to Alexandre's affairs, she quickly changes her mind when she sees how close he becomes to Veronika. This leads to a growing estrangement between her and Alexandre. The film focuses less on plot or narrative than on the confused and ambivalent life style of these three young people in post-May '68 Paris
[edit] Cast
- Bernadette Lafont as Marie
- Jean-Pierre Léaud as Alexandre
- Françoise Lebrun as Veronika
- Isabelle Weingarten as Gilberte
- Jacques Renard as Alexandre's Friend
- Jean-Noël Picq as Offenbach's lover
- Jean-Paul Belmondo as Jesus' brother
[edit] Reception
The Mother and the Whore is considered as Eustache's masterpiece, having been called the best film of the 1970s by Cahiers du cinéma and having won the Grand Prix of the Jury and the FIPRESCI prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. The film created a scandal at the Cannes Film Festival as many critics saw the film as immoral and obscene or in the words of the broadsheet Le Figaro "an insult to the nation". Its reputation grew in later years. In 1982 the literary magazine Les Nouvelles Littéraires celebrated the tenth anniversary of the film by publishing a series of articles on the film.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Powrie, Phil (March 2006). The cinema of France. Wallflower Press. pp. 133–141. ISBN 9781904764465.
[edit] External links
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Solaris |
Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, Cannes 1973 |
Succeeded by Arabian Nights |
