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The Mother and the Whore
The Mother and the Whore
8.8
/10
1,686 Ratings

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE

La maman et la putain

Directed by Jean Eustache
France, 1973
Avant-Garde, Drama, Romance

Synopsis

Jean Eustache’s marathon drama focuses on three twenty-something Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend and a Polish nurse whom he picked up at a café, and with whom he begins a desultory affair.

Synopsis

Jean Eustache’s marathon drama focuses on three twenty-something Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend and a Polish nurse whom he picked up at a café, and with whom he begins a desultory affair.

Our take

In 1973, Jean Eustache sounded the death knell for the revolutionary sixties and trashed the anarchic jubilance of the French New Wave in one long and sordid swoop. Still revered by cinema’s enfants terribles, this punk paragon of disillusionment is indispensable filmmaking: a defiant must-watch.