Defining Favourites: The Mother and the Whore (1973)

Jean Eustache's first feature film is a masterpiece of aimlessness, self-loathing, and youth disillusionment.

Photo: Janus Films

Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another - akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.

Directed by Jean Eustache
Screenplay by Jean Eustache
Produced by Vincent Malle
Starring Jean Pierre-Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Lebrun, Isabelle Weingarten
Running Time: 218 minutes
Premiere Date: May 17, 1973

A film much like The Mother and the Whore is based around a certain subset of person. It’s a very unique breed of person at that, one who fancies themselves as intellectuals often informed by the world around them within the moment. But the more time you spend with them, it feels like you’re left wondering if they really can commit to exactly what it is that they claim they stand for. For Jean Eustache, a film like The Mother and the Whore is committed to breaking apart that archetype of person might be what makes it so excruciating, but that lived in experience is one that’s wholly unique.

Even though it’s evident that this film is a relic of France following the events of May 1968, there’s no doubt that much of what Jean Eustache is bringing to the screen in The Mother and the Whore remains eternal in some way. It’s a film that was born out of a reaction towards political movements happening across the globe, but also the aftermath of youth disillusionment in turn. Much of this movie is indeed framed as a relationship drama built around Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Alexandre, his live-in girlfriend Marie, and Veronika, a sexually liberated nurse. And the film spends as much time as we possibly could with them, to create that same experience of being together with these people for months.