Nouvelle vague icon Jean-Pierre Léaud gives one of his best performances in Jean Eustache’s funny, pungent tale of poverty, longing, and seduction during the Christmas season. Desperate to buy a duffle coat, then a fashion imperative for young French men, the impoverished Léaud takes a job as Santa Claus, discovering that the disguise allows him to do many things he previously only dreamed of. In typical nouvelle vague fashion, Eustache packs the film with in-jokes: he himself has a cameo as a boxer, and he ends the film with an homage to Jean Vigo. —TIFF Bell Lightbox
Filmmaker, screenwriter Jean Eustache had a brief but important career in French cinema. His best-known film was 1973’s Mother and the Whore, an intense character study credited for marking a new phase in French filmmaking. He got his start as a director assisting such New Wave filmmakers as Godard during the 1960s. In the late ’60s, he launched his own directorial career with two features. While they garnered some acclaim, it was not until Mother and the Whore, his third feature, that the full depth of his talent and sensitivity was recognized. The film won the Grand Prix and the International Critics Award at Cannes. Through the 1970s, Eustache made several films for television and then made one last feature in 1975, Mes Petites Amoureuses. Eustache committed suicide in the early 1980s.—allmovie guide
