The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la putain)
After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May '68 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache's own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with a startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.
GENRE: Drama, Romance
MPAA RATING:
No Rating
RUN TIME: 3h 40m
RELEASE DATE: January 01, 1973
STARRING: Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten, Jacques Renard
DIRECTOR(S): Jean Eustache
PRODUCER(S): Pierre Cottrell, Bob Rafelson
WRITER(S): Jean Eustache
STUDIO: