Background
Jean Eustache was born on 30 November 1938 in Pessac, Aquitaine, France.
Jean Eustache was born on 30 November 1938 in Pessac, Aquitaine, France.
There are so many films that reckon they are dealing with love and sex that we take the steam for granted. Just even now and then, a film rises up as abrupt, elemental, and wounding as rocks.
The Mother and the Whore is 219 minutes; it relies on naked performances—Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Lebrun, and Isabelle Weingarten; and it is more shocking than Last Tango, or nearlv any other “sexy” film you can think of. On seeing Eustache’s masterpiece, one feels like someone trapped into confrontation with a pit of wild creatures. It is a film that deserves to be in perpetual repertory— in secrecy and threat, and then show it occasionally, without warning, when another film has failed to arrive. The Mother and the Whore should be rumored rather than known. It is a dark, vaguely perceived beast on the edge of polite society.