The Mother and the Whore | 1973
Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, and Bernadette Lafont in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE.
For many years, Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore was seen as a kind of white whale, a sort of right-of-passage for cinephiles both for its lack of availability and its gargantuan length. Nearly four hours long and long difficult to see, Eustache's seminal work of youthful malaise has been fully restored and is now widely available for the first time on 4K UHD from the Criterion Collection.
Coming on the heels of the French New Wave, The Mother and the Whore shares a lot of similarities with the work of Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, Varda, and the other New Wave auteurs who took the world by storm a decade prior. Its characters are enamored with cinema and sex, mostly in that order, spending their days languishing in cafes, discussing the work of F.W. Murnau, and relating their romantic travails through the lens of the movies that are their only real connection with the world around them.
While many of the New Wave filmmakers were similarly obsessed with cinema, there's something more personal and raw about what Eustache is doing here. He isn't just rewriting the language of cinema or attempting to recreate and reframe his cinematic references. The Mother and the Whore is a kind of diary, a deeply autobiographical work of exorcism through cinema. Eustache channels himself into Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a disaffected twentysomething who lives with one woman (Bernadette Lafont) but is in love with another (Françoise Lebrun). As he flits back and forth between the girlfriend and the lover, his two separate lives begin to intertwine. Trying to have his cake and eat it too, he tries to bring them together in a kind of idyllic polyamorous paradise that turns out to be more trouble than he bargained for.
Françoise Lebrun in THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE.
The film is somewhat distinguished by its sexually charged dialogue, including frank discussions of the characters' sex lives and desires. Characters ramble on at length in philosophical musings about life, sex, and cinema. It can be pretty daunting. Eustache believed in telling, not showing, and as a result, The Mother and the Whore is an incredibly wordy four hours, like a longer, sexier My Dinner with Andre. But those musings, which Eustache guarded ferociously, forbidding improvisation and insisting be delivered word for word, offer a remarkable insight into the characters' inner lives. One could look on this as the filmmaker trying to control a personal narrative, but it goes much deeper than that. There's a deep-seated pain here that's impossible to ignore. Léaud's character is, to put it bluntly, kind of a dick, and you can feel Eustache grappling with his own mistakes and inner demons, taking stock of failures and trying to reckon with others' points of view. No wonder he was so protective of the dialogue; it's a deeply personal act of self-flagellation.
One's mileage with The Mother and the Whore will hinge almost entirely on one's tolerance for that kind of lengthy introspection. The characters are at turns insufferable and engaging, winsome and relatable; sometimes, paradoxically, all at once. It's a fascinating, frustrating film; not as inscrutable as its reputation but nevertheless as insufferable as it is intoxicating. As a portrait of shifting sexual mores following the free love movement of the 1960s and a piece of personal catharsis, The Mother and the Whore remains a landmark of the era. It's not always easy to connect with - but one can't help but be drawn in by such an uncompromising act of cinematic exorcism.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
New interview with actor Françoise Lebrun
New conversation with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin and writer Rachel Kushner
Program on the film’s restoration
Segment from the French television series Pour le cinéma featuring Lebrun, director Jean Eustache, and actors Bernadette Lafont and Jean-Pierre Léaud
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Lucy Sante and an introduction to the film by Eustache
