Duelles

Director Oliver Masset-Depasse with actress/wife Anne Coesens

DUELLES                              B-                   

aka:  Mother’s Instinct

Belgium  France  (97 mi)  2018  d:  Oliver Masset-Depasse              Production web site

Not to be confused with the Rivette film by the same name, only singular instead of plural, this is what they used to call a woman’s picture, as one can imagine housewives addled with diet pills (amphetamines) in the 50’s and 60’s spending their afternoons gathered around the television glued to hysterically overdramatic soap operas like this one.  This heavily stylized film is all bluster and no bite, as it’s not really a commentary on a certain time or era, but instead relishes in recreating that lavish Sirkian look of close-ups and color palettes, heavy on artificiality and plot twists, using misdirection maneuvers to throw the audience off course, but delivers on providing a chilling atmosphere of paranoia and dread, though it’s pure entertainment and not social commentary.  Set in the early 60’s, inspired by a novel by Belgian writer Barbara Abel, but rearranged for the screen by the director and co-writers Giordano Gederlini and François Verjans, starring two remarkable Belgian actresses, next door neighbors Alice, Veerle Baetens from Felix Van Groeningen’s The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012), and Céline (Anne Coesens, wife of the director), best friends in the world, each with near identical husbands, Simon (Mehdi Nebbou) and Damien (Arieh Worthalter), and matching 8-year old sons, Theo (Jules Lefebvres) and Maxime (Luan Adam), who dig a hole between the backyard hedge that divides them for better access, living in perfect harmony with identical adjoining houses in the well-manicured suburbs of Brussels.  Creating a picture of unease right off the bat, using the swirling orchestral music of Renaud Mayeur and Frédéric Vercheval rising to hysterical heights, Alice can be seen spying out the window on her neighbor one morning, waiting until she leaves before rushing over and unlocking the front door with her own key, all looking very suspicious.  But when Céline returns, immediately noticing the curtains have been drawn, she opens them to a surprise birthday celebration in her honor, all arranged by Alice, of course, with viewers offering a smile, as they’ve been duped.  We quickly learn how close these two families are, yet the exaggerated artificiality on display is stunning, accentuating a kind of empty bourgeois extravagance, hair always in place, always dressed for a cocktail party, with obligatory drinks all around, basically ignoring the children, where the happiness feels forced and manipulated.  We get a glimpse of their respective personalities, as Alice is sensuously anxious, openly unsure of herself and filled with self-doubt, where you can read her mood on her face, while Céline is the picture of calm reserve, much more detached and orderly, rarely displaying even an ounce of emotion.

This is an era where success is defined by financial gain in a largely consumer-oriented society, where each suburban house is an audacious display of luxury and wealth, all supposedly contributing to the image of a perfect life.  What this film does is dissect that happiness, little by little, putting a strain on the marriages and friendships, adding personal conflict and tragedy, shattering that illusion, perhaps best represented by Richard Yates’ excruciatingly personal 1961 novel Revolutionary Road (made into a 2008 film by Sam Mendes) depicting a shattered portrait of the idealized 50’s male-centric marriage, one that disintegrates into marital dysfunction as it denies aspirations for women.  But this film inverts the message of that book, putting the women front and center, where they are the stars of the show, with their lives intensely scrutinized, representing the psychological breakdown of that perfect life, while the audience sits back and watches them melt and disintegrate when things start to go wrong, becoming macabre and grotesque, something they had not anticipated and were not prepared for.  The director toys with the idea of evil lurking in our midst, striking when we least expect it, catching us unawares, potentially destroying our lives, allowing for a brief recovery period before another assault begins.  It has all the trappings of a typical horror film, where the gentile politeness of the bourgeois class actually works against them, as they’ve been systematically trained not to question the status quo, but to conform to established norms, living that illusion of happiness, leaving them open and exposed, where reality can creep in.  The music, the garish look of the film, and the performances are all over-the-top, screaming artificiality, while the overly spoiled nature of one of the kids, Theo, is near diabolical at times, intruding into the more restrained adult world like a sledgehammer.  The overly stylish execution may look great, but the film feels slight, and might have actually worked better as a comedy, and may have a future as a camp classic because it eventually turns sinister, storming off the rails with aplomb, probably more Chabrol than Hitchcock, becoming a picture of morbidly acquired taste, as it’s probably not for everyone.     

Things go wrong when Alice, from her backyard, sees Maxime stepping out of the 2nd floor windowsill of his home trying to reach something stuck in the gutter, seemingly unattended, screaming at him to stay still and don’t go any farther, rushing up the stairs to grab him, but it’s too late, as he accidentally falls to his death.   This event alters the family dynamic forever, as it’s a permanent stain in their relationship, with Céline giving the cold shoulder to Alice afterwards, shutting her out, ignoring her, leaving Alice feeling terribly guilty afterwards.  When she talks to her husband about it, he thinks she’s overreacting, that Céline is mourning the loss of her son and needs some time.  At the funeral however, Theo goes berserk when one of his stuffed animals is placed into Maxime’s casket and has a fit when he can’t take it back.  Unable to be consoled, they quickly exit the church to plenty of stares of disbelief.  Afterwards, Céline hands him back the animal along with all of Maxime’s toys, where his eyes light up like its Christmas.  Alice tries to talk with Céline to make amends, but she denies there was ever a problem, yet quickly regains her trust, though it still lingers in the back of her mind.  In no time, Alice suspects Céline of luring Theo out that same window as well, reliving that same moment all over again with her own son, screaming helplessly, but this time Céline is standing right in back of him, easily pulling him back to safety.  But this act infuriates Alice, knowing this was intentionally staged, using her son as a willing pawn.  Again her husband sees little to worry about as Theo is fine, but Alice grows increasingly suspicious afterwards, consumed with rage, reaching an absurd level of paranoia, even as Céline denies any malicious intent.  The film turns on whether or not Alice is imagining things, as she only grows more desperately unhappy and depressed, with her husband starting to worry about her deteriorating mental state.  Things only escalate, however, turning into a staged fright fest of Alice’s hysteric mood swings.  But it’s the director who has the last laugh, skillfully manipulating the audience into believing all is well, that peace has prevailed, before the fireworks begin again, this time far more extreme than anything we could possibly have imagined.  While it’s an edgy, overly stylized puzzle piece, the ghastly turn of events leave no one satisfied in the end. 

The Sign of Leo (Le signe du lion)

Jean-Luc Godard making his appearance during the party sequence

Éric Rohmer on the Rue de la Huchette during the making of the film short La Sonate à Kreutzer, 1956

THE SIGN OF LEO (Le signe du lion)             B+                  

France  (103 mi)  1959  d:  Éric Rohmer

Maintaining his secrecy throughout his life, Rohmer was either born in Tulle (southwestern France) under the name Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer or born in Nancy (northeastern France) under the name Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer.  The truth remains a mystery.  His first feature was made in 1959 for Claude Chabrol’s new production company AJYM, though the film was recut and restored in 1962 when Chabrol was forced to sell the company and Rohmer disowned the recut version.  In 1962 Rohmer and his longtime producer Barbet Schroeder co-founded the production company Les films du losange which produced all of Rohmer's work except his final three features.  A lone film, not part of his Comedies And Proverbs or Moral Tales, it has continually slipped under the radar of Rohmer retrospectives, along with half a dozen rare short films from the 50’s ranging in length from 10 to 50 minutes that never screened outside of France.  Rohmer was already over 40 by the completion of this film, at least ten years older than any of the other critics who went on to become filmmakers in the Cahiers du Cinéma group, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, and Rivette, and his first film failed to have the explosive impact of his contemporaries, where The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), LES COUSINS (1959), and BREATHLESS (1960) were very much in the style of early French New Wave, becoming a major disappointment for Rohmer who returned to his work at Cahiers and continued making 16 mm shorts while having to wait another decade before making another feature.  Unavailable on DVD (though available on Region 2, Eric Rohmer - The Early Works) and one of the hardest Rohmer films to see, viewers will have to search out film schools and art house theaters for a screening of this film. 

Rohmer is considered the most literary and conservative-minded of the Cahiers group, whose low-budget films were rigorously prepared and shot, but in contrast to the early films of his contemporaries, where every frame announces it intends to change the course of cinema, this has none of the jarring New Wave techniques, yet it aptly belongs with those films by bringing the camera out into the streets, making bold use of urban locales as the aesthetic architecture of the film, where shooting locations become an expression of the character’s interior world.  While it’s a very poised and austere morality tale, taking an absurdist view of life where fate can be uncommonly cruel and without mercy, the heavily despairing overall mood is a sobering cinematic experience.  Rohmer is accused of focusing his attention on the banality of life, characterized by overly chatty, dialogue-driven films, often featuring educated, yet highly materialistic characters, including intellectuals and artists, who are constantly talking about themselves, placing themselves at the center of their existence, yet happiness, and the security of emotional attachments, remain elusive.  Rohmer has used no music in his films after this one and has always been an interior storyteller, confining himself to conventional, neatly contained, bourgeois worlds where racial diversity, for instance, simply doesn’t exist, and characters quickly grow alienated from the world around them, often displaced from God and unable to find meaning in their existence.  What is perhaps most unique about Rohmer is not so much his heralded literacy, but his undeniable success in finding cinematic images for common, everyday and ordinary moments that would otherwise seem so uncinematic.  While characters usually discuss these moral concepts at length, known for his characteristic literary and philosophical classicism, not in this film, a more gloomy effort where themes of disillusionment are instead wordlessly introduced through visual internalization.  Supposedly a favorite of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, where his film FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975) could be described as a variation on a similar theme, unrelentingly pessimistic, where a down and out carnival worker (Fassbinder as Fox) wins the lottery and suddenly has friends mooching off him left and right, all contending to be friends, which Fox desperately wants to believe, until they’ve stolen everything he has, leaving him utterly penniless and alone. 

Rohmer’s film has an unusual lead, Indiana-born Jess Hahn, a U.S. Marine who served in France during the war and became a French citizen afterwards, playing Pierre, whose heft and strong man appearance could easily pass as a gangster in a Jean-Pierre Melville film, a French-speaking American musician living a bohemian existence in Paris who is surrounded by well-to-do friends, who at the outset is informed his fabulously wealthy aunt has died, where he assumes right away he’s rich beyond his dreams, even sharing the inheritance with his cousin, inviting everyone he knows over to his flat for a celebratory party, borrowing money and running up huge debts, as accumulating bills are suddenly the least of his worries, where in typical Chabrol style (each of his earliest films feature an elaborate party sequence), he features an exuberant, but entirely naturalistic, bohemian party scene with an abundance of food and free flowing wine, where none other than Jean-Luc Godard in dark glasses, taking a break from shooting BREATHLESS (1960), shows up playing his favorite passage on the phonograph player over and over again.  In the morning he’s served an eviction notice, also news that his cousin inherited everything, so he’s quickly booted to the street, the first sign of his precipitous fall from grace.  At first, he maintains his friendships and easy connections, but they soon lose touch when’s he’s thrown out of every last known address, where angry hotel landlady Stéphane Audran (lead actress and former spouse of Chabrol) insists upon reporting him to the police (her brother is a policeman), so all hotels refuse to accept him.  As a result, Pierre spends his time endlessly walking around the Parisian neighborhoods, becoming something of a love letter to the bohemian quarters, selling his books to a mystery lover street vendor, none other than Jean-Pierre Melville, spending his final few pennies on bread, where eventually he’s forced to sleep on the street, where a dissonant and psychologically shatteringly Louis Sageur violin piece plays throughout (a rarity in a Rohmer film), whose exasperating repetitiveness may prove irksome for some.   

 

The jovial tone of the film shifts to neo realism and becomes a long, drawn out and near wordless encounter with the streets of Paris in the 50’s, capturing the mood and atmosphere of the steamy hot month of August, using the available natural light of summer, shot by pre-war cinematographer Nicolas Hayer, where despite the New Wave’s love of the streets in Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), Godard’s BREATHLESS, Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes (both 1960), Rivette’s PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961), or even Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), no other film is as graphically detailed in such carefully observed documentary style, where the city becomes the dominant force of the film, literally teeming with life from the cars on the street, strolling pedestrians, patrons sitting in outdoor café’s, to the narrow confines of hawking street vendors, like a street bazaar, and on into the heavily populated city parks, where the idle can sit uninterrupted for hours on benches, or even sleep at night, literally a time capsule conveying the sights and sounds, something along the lines of George Orwell’s autobiographical first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, which details prolonged periods of hunger, taking odd jobs to avoid destitution, and living among the working poor.  Similarly, Rohmer’s film is a bleak portrait of despair, where without friends or money or food, Pierre’s life is spiraling into a physical and spiritual decline, where his existentialist journey of endlessly walking the streets also becomes a picturesque cinematic travelogue not only of the photogenic bridges extended across the Seine River with people sitting along the river banks, but Paris is also viewed as a cumbersome city, often loud and dirty and hot, especially when seen through the eyes of the impoverished, where an air of gloom hangs over the city, especially alone at night, lonely and painful moments conveyed through the emptiness of a series of night shots. 

The is not the familiar New Wave setting of Paris with pretty girls, fast cars, or gunfights, but is a nightmarish, cruel, and indifferent city where the protagonist is not seen hanging around the street café’s, but along the lower riverbanks of the Seine, where the city is seen as an urban inferno, frustrating, and utterly forbidding.  The city itself stands for the doomed protagonist’s deteriorating state of mind, where the customary welcoming attraction of the City of Lights, where Paris is considered the romance capital of the world, sweet and inviting, instead turns into a heartlessly dark city where he finds himself abjectively alone.  Pierre is continually portrayed as a human ghost walking among the living, watching intimate couples kissing or overhearing bits and pieces of conversations, until it appears he is beyond hope, that he has lost all connection to humankind.  For whatever reason, the man is never seen looking for work, though he does work up a musical act performed in front of tourists in the street café’s under the wing of another street tramp (Jean Le Poulain) he meets on the banks of the Seine, a loud street peddler who ingratiates himself to American tourists and the wealthy, asking for donations, as he often makes a spectacle of himself, which Pierre hates and finds humiliating, though there are moments of humor, such as this stream of overheard conversation, “Is that beggar playing Bartok?”  “No, he’s just out of tune.”  “Well, it’s modern at any rate.”  Co-written by Paul Gégauff (who wrote the dialogue), ironically this was the only time that Rohmer did not write the dialogue to one of his movies.  Interspersed throughout Pierre’s wanderings are glimpses of his former friends, a newspaper photographer continually sent out of the country on work assignment, or friends discussing his disappearance, where now even if they saw him, due to his haggard appearance, they wouldn’t recognize him.  But what Rohmer’s really suggesting is that money determines your identity and social status, that without it you’re invisible and may as well not even exist to the rest of the country.  The director then rethinks that thought and offers a less fatalistic view, one apparently more in tune with chance and the possibilities of the cosmos, more akin with the finale of his later work, Le Rayon Vert (Summer) (1986).  THE SIGN OF LEO is the only Rohmer film to exhibit any hint of lower class consciousness, where the tragic hero descends into dire poverty and homelessness, but nonetheless continues to wear a suit, like most all of Rohmer’s male characters, spending the rest of his career exclusively probing the interior consciousness of the middle class.    

We Won't Grow Old Together (Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble)

WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER (Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble)   B+  
France  Italy  (107 mi)  1972  d:  Maurice Pialat

Somewhat in the vein of Jean Eustache’s bleak confessional outpourings in The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), this chilly and impersonal film is based on the director’s own autobiography, an unsparing portrait of a cad, an odious, self-absorbed, and domineering man, emblematic of the director himself, starring the dour and despondent Jean Yanne (winner of Best Actor at Cannes), wearing the same wide sideburns from Godard’s WEEKEND (1967) and Chabrol’s LE BOUCHER (1970), as well as the more energized photographic cover girl Marlène Jobert from Godard’s MASCULIN FÉMININ (1966), who also played opposite Charles Bronson in René Clément’s RIDER ON THE RAIN (1970). She’s seen here playing the buoyant yet continually hurt mistress along with another Godard actress Macha Méril from UNE FEMME MARIÉE (1964) as the overly critical wife, that pushes and pushes us further inside a failed relationship until it’s impossible not to identify with the characters’ inner world, a film in the manner of Truffaut’s later film THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (1977), complete with delusions of love, which is really nothing but self obsession, and once disappointed, and he’s always disappointed, he’s filled with self-loathing, which he usually takes out on Jobert with abusive, contemptuous comments designed to destroy any sense of her self-esteem. 

According to the director, this film has only 25 shots, a fact which, alone, suggests this is not an ordinary film, rather it’s a quasi-experimental film about endless breakups and makeups, much like the repetitive rhythm of Ravel’s “Bolero” - Maurice Ravel BOLERO - Wiener Philharmonic - YouTube (17:23).  Shot along the streets of Paris, told in an impersonal manner, always standing outside the action, the camera follows the predictable rhythms and routine of a loveless marriage with Françoise (Macha Méril), with whom he still lives, while Jean simultaneously pursues a long and unhappy 5-year affair with a much younger Catherine (Marlène Jobert), a poisonous relationship filled with acts of abuse, bullying, and intimidation.  The film consists of endless scenes of tortuous repetition, picking up Catherine, trying to entice her to bed, growing angry when she’s not interested, leaving or slamming the door in her face, seeing her again, starting the same process all over again, which happens so often that it eventually becomes ludicrous.  In a frustrating portrait of interdependency, the couple is together again, we have no idea how much time has passed, no explanation is necessary.  But neither one can end it. 

And when we think it’s over, it’s not, as they continue to keep seeing one another, where they over-analyze every move and thought.  Once she finally leaves him for good, only then does he get serious about finding her attractive, only when he realizes he’s lost her does he begin to treat her nicely, but it’s too late.  His visit to her parent’s house is excruciatingly uncomfortable, as they just don’t know how to politely get rid of him.  The structure of the film is a slow build up of the claustrophobic feelings where there is no escape, where one is choking on the familiarity of growing tired with one another, largely expressed (twenty years before Kiarostami) through their repeated confinement in a tiny, perpetually parked car Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble - YouTube (2:56), the picture of motionless and emotional paralysis and the basis of this comic, but lethally serious confessional examination.  The film was a particular favorite of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with a similar sadism used for the male protagonist of MARTHA (1974), where Pialat expressly forbid the actor Jean Yanne from displaying even a hint of tenderness.  The use of Haydn’s music from “The Creation” Hermann Prey - Die Schöpfung - Joseph Haydn YouTube (6:07) is enthralling at the finale, playing over flashback images of Jobert swimming alone in the choppy waves of the sea.  After the final break up, all that’s left are these memories.  

The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain)

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE      A                 

aka:  La Maman et la Putain

France  (219 mi)  1973  d:  Jean Eustache

THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, one of my all time favorite films, without which I never would have learned to appreciate the unique genius of John Cassavetes.  Eustache, like Cassavetes, created a completely improvisational drama while carefully scripting each and every word.  One of the mysteries of motion cinema is simply allowing the camera to capture the essence of human emotion, its best and its worst, in this case raw and unedited, filling the screen with imperfect people allowed to reveal their imperfections in full bloom.  Mistakes are made.  Attention must be paid.  People must learn to tend to the business of being people.  And it is films like this that help us do so. This is not a happy film, as it comically slithers and slides through infantile silliness and pretension before plunging us though the depths of self-pity and despair.  I always thought of this as a film about adolescence, the end of a youthful innocence.  Leave it to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum to find a political message attached to that.

Eustache carefully uses the length of the film to disassemble the persona of these blighted lovers, using confessional dialogue that exposes their raw internal distress and desperation that in this drama becomes an emotional marathon.  Though it has the appearance of improvisation, the entire dialogue came from the director's own life and was scripted entirely from conversations Eustache had or had heard, and Françoise Lebrun, who had never acted in a film before, reenacts, as Veronika, a part she played in life as Eustache's lover.  Filmed on 16 mm high contrast black and white, the force of the film is its focus on the subjects, entirely without pretense, rigorously observant, terribly funny, deeply sad, the film is a searing confessional masterpiece that unfurls in exhausting, exhilarating detail, a beautiful gut-wrenching choreography of fallible human beings, the force of which is its elegant simplicity.  According to the director, "I wrote this script because I loved a woman who left me. I wanted her to act in a film I had written. I never had the occasion, during the years that we spent together, to have her act in my films, because at that time I didn't make fiction films and it didn't even occur to me that she could act. I wrote this film for her and for Léaud; if they refused to play in it, I wouldn't have written it."  The film is dedicated to the real-life person for whom the part of Marie was written, who wound up killing herself, as did Eustache in 1981 at the age of 42.

Paraphrasing a wonderfully written review Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert at his best in 1999, where his words cry out to be used and repeated here, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose best film performance was his first, Truffaut’s 1959 film THE 400 BLOWS, playing a fierce young 13-year old roaming the streets of Paris, idolizing Balzac, and escaping into books and trouble as a way of dealing with his parent’s unhappy marriage.  His adult performances have all been an extension of that character, grown up.  Here he plays Alexandre, who smokes and talks incessantly about himself in the cafés of Paris, Les Deux Magots and La Coupole, literally performing his life theatrically for women, wearing a dark coat with a long scarf around his neck sweeping to his knees.  His best friend dresses the same way.  He spends his days in cafés, holding, but not reading, Proust.  “Look, there’s Sartre – the drunk,” he says one day in Café Flore, Eustache supplies a quick shot of several people at a table, one of whom may or may not be Sartre.  Alexandre talks about Sartre staggering out after his long intellectual chats in the café and speculates that the great man’s philosophy may just be alcoholic musings.

Alexandre lives with Marie, Bernadette Lafont, who earlier starred in Truffaut’s film short THE MISCHIEF MAKERS (1958), also Chabrol’s BEAU SERGE (1958) and LES BONNES FEMMES (1960), playing a beautiful boutique owner who supports him.  He’s just broken up with Gilberte, Isabelle Weingarten, who was introduced in the Robert Bresson film Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur... (1972), who rejected his proposal of marriage, and his way of dealing with this despair is to date the first woman he sees that looks like her, Veronika, Francoise Lebrun, a nurse from Poland, subjecting her to a great many of his thoughts and would be thoughts.  Much of her initial screen time consists of closeups of her listening to one of Alexandre’s endless monologues, his eyes always following the progress of other women in view.  One of the wonders of the film is the way women can let a man like Alexandre talk endlessly about himself while they regard him like a specimen of aberrant behavior.  Women keep a man like Alexandre around out of curiosity about what new idiocy he will next exhibit.  Of course, Alexandre is cheating on both women, but his style is to play with relationships, even bringing both to bed at the same time just to find out where it will all lead.  In this case, it leads to the emotional devastation of both women.  While Marie mostly weeps in silence or plays her favorite records, Veronika is frank about herself, sleeping around because she likes sex, as it takes her out of her low self-esteem.  She has a passionate monologue near the end of the film, a torrent of self-pity describing her sexual needs and her resentment that women aren’t supposed to admit their feelings, describing the miseries of loveless sex, confessing in front of Alexandre and Marie that she loves him and she loves having sex with him, so why should she be shamed of that?  It is the lower class, working girl Veronika who throws the pretense of people like Alexandre and Marie to the wind, literally exposing the middle class as one big lie, a blown up dream, “The Working Class Goes to Paradise,” people who have the economic good fortune to be able to comfortably hide behind their world of illusions and deceptions without having to pay the price that others unfortunately must pay for their mistakes.  Alexandre accompanies her back to her room, where she rejects him in disgust, explaining she may be pregnant with his child.  He leaves, but then runs back and proposes marriage which she accepts while vomiting into a wash basin, and Alexandre collapses on the floor against the refrigerator, shivering in agony.

A friend Barry Goetsch made an interesting observation about the title.  By all accounts, Veronika is considered the whore, as she willingly calls herself one, but by the end of the film when we learn she is the mother carrying Alexandre’s child, we discover it is Alexandre who is the whore.  The difference of each gender in approaching sex is the theme that runs throughout the film.  Men can have sex with anyone with no complications, even marriage can be proposed frivolously, as Alexandre does twice in this film, in the beginning and at the end.  Only women can bear children, which carries an enormous commitment that men simply cannot overlook, always and forever, ironically, a phrase men use to express their commitment of love to women.

Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says this is the film that slammed the door on the French New Wave and is one of the strongest statements about the aftermath of the failed French revolution of May 1968, literally a definitive expression of the closing in of Western culture after the end of an era of hope and optimism about a changing future known as the 60’s.  Innocence lost?  He suggests the director’s suicide confirms the film’s painting such a bleak portrait, a terminal collapse of will and hope, that it accurately describes “not just where we are today but of who we are,” that Alexandre’s expression of hopelessness about social change and human possibilities is in fact an expression of defeat, and accurately reflects the defeatist times we’re currently living through.  Some of Alexandre’s expressions:  “To speak the words of others, that’s what freedom must be,” or “My only dignity is my cowardice,” or “Nausea is a noble sentiment.  The world will be saved by children, soldiers, and madmen,” to which Veronika replies, “I don’t know if you make them up or not, but you say some very beautiful things.  In a bad film it’d be called the message.”

Eustache links the dreams of May 1968 to the memories of the Nazi occupation.  Alexandre’s unnamed friend has a fetish for Nazi paraphernalia and carries a book entitled SS and the Gestapo – The Reign of Terror, also plays a record of Zarah Leander songs Zarah Leander: Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh'n ... YouTube (3:36), which prompts Alexandre to lament being born after the time when girls swooned over soldiers in uniforms, that now “business has replaced the uniform, young professionals in sports cars.”  One of the climactic shots focuses on a bereft Marie drowning her sorrows by repeatedly listening to a 1948 recording of Edith Piaf singing “Les Amants de Paris” YouTube - La maman et la putain YouTube (3:05).  Eustache’s choice of actors cannot be separated from their link to the New Wave and its aftermath.  When Alexandre reproaches Gilberte for forgetting their love and resigning herself to “mediocrity,” he says, “After crises one must forget everything quickly.  Erase everything, like France after the occupation, like France after May 1968.  You recover like France after May ’68,” later recalling a time, “There was the Cultural revolution, May ’68, the Rolling Stones, long hair, the Black Panthers, the Palestinians, the underground.  And for the last two or three years, nothing anymore.”  And still later, he describes with envy, “In May ’68 I went to a café, everyone was crying.  It was beautiful.  A tear-gas bomb had exploded, a crack in reality opened up.  I’m afraid it will all be gone.”