Jean-Pierre Léaud and Bernadette Lafont star in Jean Eustache’s THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, getting a rare screening at FIAF
CINÉMATUESDAYS: THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN) (Jean Eustache, 1973)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, April 3, $10, 7:30
Series continues through April 24
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org
Jean-Pierre Léaud gives a bravura performance in Jean Eustache’s Nouvelle Vague classic about love and sex in Paris following the May 1968 cultural revolution. Léaud stars as Alexandre, a jobless, dour flaneur who rambles on endlessly about politics, cinema, music, literature, sex, women’s lib, and lemonade while living with current lover Marie (Bernadette Lafont), obsessing over former lover Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), and starting an affair with new lover Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a quiet nurse with a rather open sexual nature. The film’s three-and-a-half-hour length will actually fly by as you become immersed in the complex characters, the fascinating dialogue, and the excellent performances. Much of the movie consists of long takes in which Alexandre shares his warped view of life and art in small, enclosed spaces, the static camera focusing either on him or his companion. The Mother and the Whore is screening on April 3 at 7:30 as part of FIAF’s retrospective of the fifty-plus-year career of French New Wave star Lafont, which also includes Claude Chabrol’s The Good Time Girls, Nelly Kaplan’s A Very Curious Girl, François Truffaut’s The Mischief Makers and Such a Gorgeous Girl Like Me, and Olivier Peyon’s Stolen Holidays. Lafont will be at FIAF on April 17 to participate in a Q&A following the April 17, 7:00, Truffaut double feature and will also read published and unpublished letters from Truffaut (in French) on April 18 in Le Skyroom.