Alexandre, the main character in Jean Eustache's LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN, lives a lifestyle that can be attractive to a certain type of twentysomething male. He doesn't have a job, he lives with a woman who pays the rent and sometimes sleeps with him, he mostly hangs out in cafés trying to pick up women and prattling on about life, fancying himself intelligent. Sure, to those around him he may seem like a lazy freeloader, but he doesn't mind, and after all it's nice work if you can get it.

One of the reasons LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN is a masterpiece is that, while Eustache doesn't comdemn Alexandre, he's not impressed by him either. His mode of conversation seems to be to circle a point endlessly, name-dropping on occasion, hoping that the convolutions of his soliloquies cover for the fact that he isn't really saying much. Then he meets Veronika, who is able to look him in the eye and be amused by what he says, and then when there's an opening in the conversation to level with him by uttering a single sentence that comes directly to the point. This, of course, forces Alexandre into another monologue, in which he has to cover for what he said in the last one.

Alexandre is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who began his career as the young star of Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS. Here he has the same boyish charm, and also the same disdain for the rules of society. The main difference is that he's essentially on his own now, and no one in his life really cares much about what he does. His roommate Marie (Bernadette Lafont) is older and has a steady job, and while she sometimes becomes frustrated with his behavior, she has her own life to worry about. She usually tolerates him because she's learned to pick and choose her battles, and because he sometimes amuses her too.

Early in the film, Alexandre leaves the apartment to meet his ex-girlfriend Isabelle (Isabelle Weingarten), who he pesters about the idea of getting married while her behavior makes it clear that she's beyond being amused with him. These scenes serve a number of purposes. To begin with, he tells her that he's not satisfied with the uncertainty of how they separated, and says that if they don't get married then they must break it off cleanly (of course, they haven't seen each other in a while, and she has moved on). Second, we see that Alexandre, for all his allegedly bohemian ideals, still sees himself getting married, although how much he believes in the institution is called into question when he states that if Isabelle married her current boyfriend she might still want to marry Alexandre after her seemingly inevitable divorce. Guys like Alexandre, who fancy themselves irresistable, can't seem to understand when women find a way to resist them.

The final reason for these scenes is for us to meet Isabelle, who we come to see as being Alexandre's "type." She is demure and serious, with her hair parted in the middle. After he parts ways with Isabelle, he almost immediately picks up Veronika, who sort of resembles Isabelle (mostly in the hair and the seriousness), but otherwise has a very different kind of presence. Her face is reminiscent of an actress you might see in a Dovzhenko film (as "the flower of Soviet womanhood," perhaps), and her body is much more substantial. And while Isabelle gave off an air of innocence, Veronika owns up to her promiscuity and her sensuality.

It's pretty clear not long after we've met Veronika that she's more than a match for Alexandre, and the film makes that pretty clear when he, rambling on, states that talking all the time and remaining silent are essentially the same thing (particularly for him, since he really doesn't have anything to say). More ambiguous is the question of when he comes to this same realization. Veronika talks early on the film about how she doesn't really fall in love, but later she repeatedly tells Alexandre that she loves him, but he never says the same to her. And yet he doesn't rush into sleeping with her, for reasons he never fully explains. It is to the film's credit that it leaves it to the audience to answer questions like this.

Another tantalizing question is how exactly Marie fits into Alexandre's life. Sometimes she is disapproving of his behavior, giving him overdramatized guilt trips, but these scenes tend to give way to playfulness. And while she initially disapproves of Veronika (which would seemingly make her the "maman" of the title, with Veronika being the "putain"), later they bond over their mutual interest, Alexandre. They even carry on an on-again-off-again sexual liaison and share the same bed, but what are her feelings for him?

The film, which is 3 ½ hours in length, doesn't so much contain a story as to document the lives of these characters. It is in black and white, and is lit in such a way that every scene feels natural even while we are able to make out nearly every detail in the image. Eustache also favors takes and medium-to-long shots, which keeps us attuned to both the actions and the expressions of the characters. One example of this is a beautifully-shot, seemingly throwaway moment where we see Marie lying in bed, her eyes following the out-of-frame Alexandre until he walks into frame and sits down next to her.

I've long maintained that American filmmakers have no idea how to properly make lengthy films, since they tend to use too much plot, and to pepper the narrative with "exciting" scenes to maintain audience interest. More astute is the style employed by Eustache in this film, in which he has only a bare minumum of story (better to call it "incident," really), and lets the slower editing rhythm allow the film to establish a deliberate pace, casting a kind of spell over the audience.

While there is very little in the way of story here, the film nonetheless builds over the course of its length. Near the end of the film, there is an extended sequence in which the three main characters of the film sit up together one night, bonding. Eustache's unhurried pace and acute attention to the details of behavior make this sequence a note-perfect evocation of the feeling of a late-night bull session. For a while, the women gang up on Alexandre, as Marie mocks his lifestyle and Veronika pokes fun at the appearance of his sexual organ. Then Veronika, who for most of the film is seen patiently listening to Alexandre, becomes serious and defends herself, railing against the idea of her being a "putain" (just as Marie has throughout the film defied her role as the "maman"). Throughout this monologue the camera remains fixed on her face, and where in a lesser film this would make the audience restless, here it's transfixing, because of Veronika's conviction and because of how interesting her face is.

Jean-Pierre Léaud was an icon of the French New Wave ever since he appeared in THE 400 BLOWS and the other Antoine Doinel films, and LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN plays off this iconic status. Bernadette Lafont, while not as internationally celebrated, had also appeared in a number of New Wave films, in particular as the hot-to-trot Jane in Chabrol's early masterpiece LES BONNES FEMMES (which I've also reviewed on this site). Here she manages to radiate both maturity and sexuality, while often keeping her emotional cards close to her chest. Most interesting of all, however, may be Françoise Lebrun, who plays Veronika. Her presence seems so alien to the world presented in the film, her air of fair earthiness contrasting with Alexandre and Marie's dark sophistication. She had been Eustache's girlfriend prior to making this film, and had never appeared in a feature before LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN, and yet it's this natural quality that makes her so fascinating onscreen. She seems so free of affectation and bull in this film, and her silences are more compelling than just about anything Alexandre has to say.

One of the details that can be made out in Marie and Alexandre's bedroom is an LP of the Rolling Stones' GIMME SHELTER, and just as the Maysles brothers' film of that title sounded a kind of death knell for the musical ideals of the late 60s, so this film does much the same thing for the sexual revolution. At one point Alexandre sleeps with Veronika and Marie at the same time, but while even a few years previous this would seem the story's logical conclusion, this film continues on for almost another hour, as we see the three characters distance themselves from this act. While for one night they were able to participate in the notion of liberated sexuality, after that they are unable to do so again. There's a scene where they are all drunk and in bed together and Alexandre decides to sleep with Veronika, and when Marie tries to join them Veronika pushes Marie's hand away.

Finally, Veronika and Alexandre leave the apartment, leaving Marie behind (her long final shot, accompanied by an Edith Piaf song, is quietly devastating). When Veronika tries to get away from Alexandre, he chases back to her bedroom and proposes marriage, much as he did to Isabelle before. Unlike with Isabelle, however, he doesn't go to the trouble of making an argument in favor of their getting married, but instead becomes frenzied in chasing her that he comes out and asks. After she accepts his proposal, she then demands that he hand her a basin so that she can vomit, and the camera lingers on Alexandre as he slumps to the floor, exhausted and left, for the first time in ages, speechless.

LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN is one of the great masterpieces of the cinema, and its greatness can be defined as much by what it isn't as by what it is. At several points in the story, the characters talk about movies, and in each case these movies are a far cry from the film we're watching. The most potent example is when Alexandre reads aloud a blurb about a film called THE WORKING CLASS GOES TO PARADISE, a title which gives off the distinct, pungent aroma of Extreme Social Commitment™ and the description of which sounds so unlike Eustache's vision that it's a bit of shock to realize that it's an actual movie. We also see Alexandre and Marie at a film that looks like some kind of experimental rock musical, with the blaring music, jittery camerawork, and rapid-fire editing that Eustache deliberately avoids in his own work.

Although theres a fair amount of nudity and sex in this film, it's not a "sex movie," and even though it would seem to come from the tradition of the French New Wave, LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN really has no precedent. Quite simply, it's an unadorned film about three realistic, specific characters and the way they live their lives in the present. While the incidents in the film are not conventionally cinematic, the fact that Eustache portrays them with such detail and interest is what makes them so fascinating to watch.

In Richard Linklater's WAKING LIFE, Caveh Zahedi speaks of cinema as being about Holy Moments. What he means isn't that camera documents incidents that are interesting, but rather than the moments we see on the screen are interesting because they've been documented by the camera. Zahedi could've been talking about LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN, one of the greatest and most unique films I've ever seen.

Edited on 9/28/03 to add: Don't know how I could have forgotten that great scene where Veronika and Alexandre wake up after sleeping together in Marie's bed. They sit there, Alexandre puts on a record and sings along (his boyish glee and "a-ha!" hand gestures when the verses begin are priceless), and then they listen to the Sunrise Preacher. It goes on for quite a long time, but it provides a good look into their relationship. The self-importance of his demeanor seems to fall away in this sequence, and while Veronika's laughter has an element of disbelief in it, she's also laughing with him, like you do when a friend says something that he's convinced is hilarious, and you don't think it's that funny but you can't help but enjoy how much he gets into it. Is this where she decides that she really does love him?

Recommended:
Yes