Jean Eustache Movies
Filmmaker, screenwriter Jean Eustache had a brief but important career in French cinema. His best-known film was 1973's Mother and the Whore, an intense character study credited for marking a new phase in French filmmaking. He got his start as a director assisting such New Wave filmmakers as Godard during the 1960s. In the late '60s, he launched his own directorial career with two features. While they garnered some acclaim, it was not until Mother and the Whore, his third feature, that the full depth of his talent and sensitivity was recognized. The film won the Grand Prix and the International Critics Award at Cannes. Through the 1970s, Eustache made several films for television and then made one last feature in 1975, Mes Petites Amoureuses. Eustache committed suicide in the early 1980s. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1977
Director Jean Eustache has included two identical stories told in contrasting ways in this very short festival feature. In the story, a young man who has heard that a hole in the men's room wall will allow him to see into the women's bathroom finds the tale very exciting. Even the fact that he has to lie face down on the men's room floor to see into the ladies' side does nothing to deter him. The first version is as told by an actor to a film director and his friends, and it initiates a philosophical discussion on the meaning of sexual excitement (and related issues). The tale is then acted out by Jean Noel Picq. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michel Lonsdale, Jean Douchet, (more)
Wim Wenders' mines Dennis Hopper's real-life experience as a painter and collector in this existential take on the American gangster film based on a Patricia Highsmith novel featuring the notoriously sociopathic Tom Ripley. Hopper stars as the eponymous American, currently a middleman selling the work of American painter Derwatt (Nicholas Ray), who has feigned his own death to increase the value of his paintings. While auctioning this work in Berlin, he meets art restorer Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz), who he learns is suffering from an incurable blood disease. When a shady friend (Gerard Blain) requires Ripley to find a "clean" non-professional to do a contract hit in order to pay off a debt, even he is reluctant. But he quickly realizes that the physically vulnerable Jonathan would be perfect for the job, and tries to get him to accept by employing various subterfuges to persuade him that his condition is even worse than it is. For his part, Blain guarantees the restorer that his family will be financially secure for life, and a deal is struck. As usual, nothing works out quite as expected. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi
- Starring:
- Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, (more)
- 1975
Living a dismal life taking care of his uncommunicative and nearly blind father, Vincent (Fabrice Luchini), a sculptor, tries to make life better for himself but fails for a variety of reasons. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michel Bouquet, Fabrice Luchini, (more)
- 1974
This film reveals the thoughts and observations of a good-natured young man as he lives through situations which would crush someone less accepting. The boy is being brought up in the country by his grandmother, and Daniel (Martin Loeb) is seen showing off amiably for his friends. Soon his long-absent mother (Ingrid Caven) takes him back into her life, now that she has a steady new man, and sends him to be apprenticed with a bicycle repairman instead of having him continue with school. Daniel accepts this, though he would rather go to school. Here, too, his easygoing manner wins him friends and it appears that all will work out well. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Martin Loeb, Ingrid Caven, (more)
- 1969
This documentary concerns the archaic custom of selecting a town virgin, who will be the leading citizen for a day. Celebrated by the church, speeches and a party, the virgin is admired for her virtue after she is chosen by the mayor and the town council. The event is solemnly celebrated annually in Pessac, France. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Le Weekend remains his most consistently relentless attack on the bourgeois values of his own country and the perceived imperialism of the United States. Mireille Darc plays the central character, an "average" woman who is systematically radicalized during a weekend motor trip. No sooner have the woman and her husband (Jean Yanne) embarked on their journey than they become enmeshed in the mother of all traffic jams. The motorists rave, rant, burn, rape, murder, pillage and even descend into cannibalism -- all of which is treated by Godard as a natural progression of events. The prevalent theory that Jean-Luc Godard had intended Weekend as the apotheosis of his career is bolstered by the film's last two titles: "End of Film." "End of Cinema." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, (more)
- 1966
In this affectionate and not uncritical exploration of small-town life in France, Jean-Pierre Leaud plays Daniel, a teenager on the verge of making some major decisions about his life, which will probably result in his leaving his backwater home. He is helping support himself by working any part-time job he can find. On one occasion, he discovers the power of costumes and disguises when girls show an interest in him for the first time after he dons a Santa costume for a part-time job. The flip side of that power is that, when the one girl he manages to get a date with finds out that he's not a cherubic senior citizen (not even close), she cancels their date. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Léaud
