1245 The Mother and the Whore

[swo17]

The Mother and the Whore



After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and the upheavals of May 1968 came the near religiously revered magnum opus by Jean Eustache. In his long-unavailable body of work, ranging from documentaries about his native village to closely autobiographical narrative films, Eustache pioneered a forthright and fearless brand of realism. The pinnacle of this innovative style, The Mother and the Whore follows Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a Parisian pseudo-intellectual who lives with his tempestuous girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), even as he begins a dalliance with the sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), leading the three into an emotionally turbulent love triangle. Through daringly sustained long takes and confessional dialogue, Eustache captures a generation navigating the disillusionment of the 1970s, and in the process achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

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

[therewillbeblus]

None of Eustache's other films/shorts are included, wonder if we'll ever get a separate box of those now

[domino harvey]

My God, they’re going to drip release this and maybe a couple more titles before just giving up, aren’t they? I guess we can look forward to the same treatment for Rozier now too

[ryannichols7]

None of Eustache's other films/shorts are included, wonder if we'll ever get a separate box of those now

it'll go right between my Chaplin short films box and my Juzo Itami box

[domino harvey]

Remember when finding out Criterion had the rights was a good thing? Now I long for virtually any other label to get a film I like, because they’ll actually release their holdings instead of squatting on the rights and underwhelming when they do release something

[criterionsnob]

Well, the good news is this is being released on UHD. It will be quite an upgrade going from my ancient bootleg DVD.

[Beloved Aunt]

The film's assistant director Luc Beraud, who is also a recurring Eustache collaborator, has actually written a book about his work with the man. Surely one would prioritize him as a contributor over this Jean-Pierre Gorin character?

[knives]

Gorin makes a lot of sense as a commentator given his own relationship with French cinema and work in academia. It would be nice for a second interview, but Gorin is unquestionably a good decision.

[ryannichols7]

Remember when finding out Criterion had the rights was a good thing? Now I long for virtually any other label to get a film I like, because they’ll actually release their holdings instead of squatting on the rights and underwhelming when they do release something

I'm still waiting on the Kinuyo Tanaka films, we'll probably get those one at a time at this point too. or potentially they'll jam all 6 films in a 3 Blu-ray set in a scanovo case and charge $149.99 MSRP for it, with a grand total of three extras

Well, the good news is this is being released on UHD. It will be quite an upgrade going from my ancient bootleg DVD.

it is pretty cool this is going from VHS to UHD in the US

[black&huge]

My God, they’re going to drip release this and maybe a couple more titles before just giving up, aren’t they? I guess we can look forward to the same treatment for Rozier now too

And we still only ever got 3 Almodovar films after 10 years

[domino harvey]

And one of those was already on Blu in the UK!

[ryannichols7]

they gave up on Satyajit Ray, upgrading Ozu, the rest of Hollis Frampton's Hapax Legomena films...

[TechnicolorAcid]

I’m calling up the New York Times to publish an article on this, Criterion have been doing this for far too long.

[JSC]

...don't forget the eighteen or so Kurosawa titles that have yet to show up. Madadayo anyone?

[dwk]

That cover really reminds me of the "covers" for the films in the Akerman set, which makes me wonder if this was intended to be part of a set and they decided to change the release plan really late in the process.

The lack of urgency on getting some of these titles they have out is something that I wish they would get asked about at some public event (If anybody runs into the Criterion Van, you should corner Peter Becker and, nicely, ask him about this.)

[ryannichols7]

or also why they think it's just acceptable to own the rights to all these films and withhold them from disc releases. it's awfully predatory, especially since it's own that streaming rights and disc rights are two different things. if Criterion is getting all the rights to these films solely to have them in perpetuity on their streaming service - why not just allow disc rights to go elsewhere and negotiate permanent streaming rights? as it stands, it seems pretty unlikely that the other Eustache films will ever see a disc. this is after the Janus social media made such a big deal about getting the rights to his whole filmography, and it's known they got the UK rights too

I would be respectful with my question if I was ever given the chance to ask Becker personally, but the amount of examples at this point are massive. I genuinely would love to hear his response. I see more and more people on the internet noticing these sorts of things, and it's not just on this forum. but even the Facebook and Instagram commenters

[hearthesilence]

Maybe the Carlotta set will be a better alternative, depending on the encoding?

[Peacock]

Because what will their other Eustache releases look like?

Surely they have some sort of a boxset planned or why wouldn’t they have thrown in one of the shorts if they plan to drip feed the other titles out?

But what would that boxset look like? Jean’s Little Loves and everything else? He has, what, 7 other features, most of them rather short so they could probably uncomfortably squeeze all the shorts and these features into a 4 disc set. Fingers crossed… but there’s no way they are releasing Le Cochon individually.

Like everyone else I dread hearing Criterion have the rights as it means they’ll release a couple of big hitters then forget the rest. And I too would love someone to interview Peter Becker and ask him directly what the plan is here, they can’t release enough titles per month to ever release everything (on disc) that they have the rights to, so what’s the plan for those titles? Lloyd, Chaplin, Imamura, possibly a couple of Von Stroheims etc etc. Particularly as they keep buying up new rights?

[Peacock]

As for this film, it’s a masterpiece. Very different to Mes Petites…

It builds on the tone of his earlier shorts and continues Eustache’s exploration of male treatment of women and of the male ego. It really feels like a direct attack on the romanticism of the early New Wave films.

Powerful stuff. The monologue where the “Whore” finally gets her say and Leaud can’t crawl away is incredible. Very simply filmed and edited but surely one of the greatest scenes in cinema.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, it's one of my favorite films. My writeup from a past list project:

The Mother and the Whore

After posturing at nouvelle vague malaise, particularly in his first 'technically'-qualifying first feature Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes, Eustache disgorged a deeply personal, epochal account of the life of a drifter who is ironically living in stagnancy. The antithesis of Linklater’s Before trilogy, as intimacy born from shared insight is replaced with ennui reinforced through fatalistic myopia. Léaud parrots a belief that there is no such thing as chance, and destines himself to corporeal purgatory as a non-participant because he’s afraid to engage with the world; and yet he’s curious and magnetized by the very stimuli he is repelled by, frightened of, and indifferent to. This is a film about the disease of disengagement pitted against the allure of engagement, with little chance for happy endings but plenty of amusing fleeting interludes to pass the time. So for privileged, socially-rebellious, self-destructively apathetic and inert -yet self-indulgently pretentious- intellectuals in modern western civilizations, it’s Life: The Movie.

And then Françoise Lebrun's speech happens in the final act, which serves as a confession from Eustache against the value of his own solipsism, a refraction away from his narrative and into unconditional concern for a voice ignored by society, including the film itself. What appears to be an argument for humanism transforms into another devastating illustration of emotional confusion. He doesn't know what to do with this uncomfortable empathy that leaves the orbit of his gravitational narcissism, or the tragedy of his powerlessness to forge a connection with the foreign experiences he cares for in these women or even himself, and so he channels his anguish in the only authentic way he can to demonstrate this painful fallibility: He has his whore demand release from her label, he has his mother cry alone with temporal attention signifying equal worth to the absent couple, and he has his stand-in scream.

The final scene is a complicated eruption that communicates a manic crisis of enhanced passion, but there's no catharsis in this surrender- only a realization of impotence to breach isolation, regurgitated into the void as the film abruptly ends. The abrasive finish is disconcerting after the meandering banality we've witnessed for so long, drama extinguished as soon as it's triggered, and we truly understand why these people have kept their guards up for three and a half hours, only it's been far longer than that. They are withered souls in youthful bodies, having lived their own personal eternities in perpetual alienation. This wasn't triggered by May '68 but it is a symptom of that cultural era, and there's no antidote in sight.

[pistolwink]

I do wonder what the economics are such that labels like Vinegar Syndrome and Indicator can put out lavish box sets devoted to terminally obscure filmmakers, laden with copious (maybe even over-copious) extras, and still somehow eke out a profit margin, while Criterion seems to only be able (or willing) to put out stuff like this—individual films with scanty bonus features—even when centered around one of the most critically-acclaimed art films of the 1970s. I know that in France and some other countries, the big projects often have a bit of state support (via the CNC in France's case), but that isn't the case in the US or UK, so what's the deal? Is it simply that the sorts of films Criterion wants to release mostly come from rights-holders who charge more (cf. some of the exploitation stuff released by VS which might be licensed for a relatives song)? Or that Criterion's reputation means that rights-holders can charge more? Or just that Criterion has become over-cautious? Or that they are focused on seeding their streaming service, seeing that as the future?

A complete Eustache set would have seemed to be a no-brainer, given his small and singular body of work.

[dwk]

Part of the economics that drive Vinegar Syndrome and Indicator (and other labels) are limited editions. VS especially have a fan base that snaps up their releases to get the slipcovers. Criterion doesn't do limited editions, and it would be way more expensive to keep boxsets like those released by VS or Indicator in-print.

[rrenault]

Maybe the Carlotta set will be a better alternative, depending on the encoding?

If the Carlotta set is FiM then I’m sure it does the job for this film, even knowing Criterion’s 4K SDR release exists. I was actually tempted to pick it up during Carlotta’s flash sale this weekend, but oh well…

In the end, I just snagged their UHD of Wings of Desire for €13, which frankly feels like highway robbery.

That said, I wonder if they’ll introduce a Janus Classics line at some point to bring out all those films at a lower price point that lack a market for a UHD release. Think Mes Petites Amoureuses, the Kinuyo Tanaka and Naruse films, the Chahine films, the rest of Rivette’s catalog, etc.

How many people are seriously going to buy L’Amour Fou or Cairo Station on UHD? I’m even skeptical of there being a UHd market for M & H for what it’s worth.

[tenia]

My memory tells me the Carlotta Eustache set was done by FiM, but it'd need double checking to be sure.

[nicolas]

The Carlotta set should be FiM throughout but I didn’t check all the discs in my player. I’ve synced subtitles and got a look at the masters at the same time but didn’t see any issues, so this is most likely David M all the way through unless LSP contributed as well. Suffice to say, this is a safe purchase.