Word Made Flesh: The Films of Jean Eustache
From May 17 through June 5, the Gene Siskel Film Center, in association with Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (MAE), presents Word Made Flesh: The Films of Jean Eustache.
Best known for his 1972 masterpiece THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, Eustache was a key figure in the evolution of post-New Wave French cinema and a maverick whose influence is acknowledged by other individualistic filmmakers such as Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, Philippe Garrel, Harmony Korine, and Jim Jarmusch (whose 2005 film BROKEN FLOWERS is dedicated to Eustache). In addition to THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, this series affords an opportunity to view Eustache’s other works, including his rarely shown but equally impressive second feature MES PETITES AMOUREUSES, and the previously unseen full-length version of his documentary portrait NUMÉRO ZÉRO.
Born in the small town of Pessac in 1939, Eustache completed only two feature films, along with several shorts and documentaries, before his self-inflicted death in 1981, following a debilitating auto accident. Little is known about his personal life outside of his films, which he described as “as autobiographical as fiction can be.” MES PETITES AMOUREUSES is set in the two country towns where he grew up; THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE was filmed in his own apartment.
Following in the footsteps of Eric Rohmer, Eustache demonstrated that talk could be gloriously cinematic. The raw naturalism of his actors’ performances earned comparisons to the improvisatory cinema of Cassavetes, yet every word of THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE was carefully scripted. Eustache’s films are both cerebral and sensual, with a strong emphasis on sexuality. As he said of his 1977 film A DIRTY STORY (a title that could be aptly applied to several of his works), “I showed that sex has nothing to do with morals, not even with aesthetics. Sex is a metaphysical affair.”
Special thanks to Diane Eberhardt, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Chicago; Delphine Selles, Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Philippe Chevassu, Connaissance du Cinema.
-- Martin Rubin
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Reduced Admission!
Members of Alliance Française de Chicago admitted for $7 to any Eustache screening.
A DIRTY STORY
(UNE SALE HISTOIRE)
1977, Jean Eustache, France, 47 min.
With Jean-Noël Picq, Michel Lonsdale
Experimental and entertaining, A DIRTY STORY tells the same dirty story twice, first as a confessional documentary in which writer Jean-Noël Picq recounts a self-incriminating incident of peeking into a women’s bathroom, then as a fictional piece with Michel Lonsdale in the central role. 35mm.
Preceded by ALIX’S PHOTOS (1980, 18 min., 16mm), a tricky tour-de-force in which an actress seems to be describing an album of photographs, and HIERONYMOUS BOSCH’S GARDEN OF DELIGHTS (1979, 34 min., Beta SP video), in which Jean-Noël Picq of A DIRTY STORY offers a fresh slant on the famous painting. All in French with English subtitles. (MR)
Sunday, May 25, 3:00 pm
THE LOST SORROWS OF JEAN EUSTACHE
(LA PEINE PERDUE DE JEAN EUSTACHE)
1997, Angel Diaz, France, 52 min.
LE COCHON
(THE PIG)
1970, Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol, France, 50 min.
THE LOST SORROWS OF JEAN EUSTACHE is an illuminating overview of the director’s life and films, featuring interviews and readings by friends and colleagues such as Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, and Eustache’s son, Boris. In French with English subtitles. Beta SP video.
Shot in a single day on a small farm, this immersive documentary records a hog’s passage from squeal to sausage. Jared Rapfogel in Senses of Cinema called LE COCHON “the Eustache film I love the most... beautiful, sensitive, big-hearted.” 16mm; the unsubtitled soundtrack consists of natural sounds and largely unintelligible regional dialect. (MR)
Saturday, May 17, 5:45 pm
Tuesday, June 3, 6:00 pm
MES PETITES AMOUREUSES
(MY LITTLE LOVES)
1974, Jean Eustache, France, 123 min.
With Martin Loeb, Ingrid Caven
Eustache refused to repeat himself in this follow-up to THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE that many critics consider superior to its predecessor, turning from city to country, talk to looks, black-and-white to color, the end of youth to the cusp of adolescence. In a series of sharply observed vignettes at once charming and disturbing, a 13-year-old country boy gropes his way (sometimes literally) through his first encounters with the opposite sex, which fall far short of the Technicolor fantasies served up at the local cinemas. Beautifully photographed by Nestor Almendros (DAYS OF HEAVEN). In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Sunday, May 18, 3:00 pm
Tuesday, May 20, 6:00 pm
THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE
(LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN)
1973, Jean Eustache, France, 215 min.
With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont
“A brilliantly written film, and the performances are so good that these aren’t Parisians but people we know.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“The greatest movie about love.”--Harmony Korine, Film Comment
Set in the aftermath of the 1960s, Eustache’s landmark film is a mammoth account of three not-so-young Parisians adrift in a sea of talk--funny, sad, scatological, monological, conversational, philosophical. Jean-Pierre Léaud, at the center of the maelstrom for nearly four hours, delivers an awesome performance as a self-absorbed slacker who dangles between two women, his steadfast girlfriend (Lafont) and a free-and-easy nurse (Françoise Lebrun), and two concepts of Woman, the Mother and the Whore. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
Saturday, May 24, 7:00 pm
Wednesday, May 28, 6:30 pm
CANCELLED
NUMÉRO ZÉRO
1971/2003, Jean Eustache, France, 104 min.
The subtitled print of NUMERO ZERO cannot be delivered in time for our screening. We will substitute the program previously screened on May 17 of LE COCHON and THE LOST SORROWS OF JEAN EUSTACHE. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
Tuesday, June 3, 6:00 pm
SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES
(LE PÈRE NOËL A LES YEUX BLEUS)
1966, Jean Eustache, France, 47 min.
With Jean-Pierre Léaud
ROBINSON’S PLACE
(DU CÔTÉ DE ROBINSON)
1963, Jean Eustache, France, 42 min.
With Daniel Bart, Dominique Jayr
Packaged together under the title “Bad Company,” these two early featurettes by Eustache demonstrate the New Wave influence as well as the emergence of his own distinctively cooler vision of self-absorbed, sexually immature characters. ROBINSON’S PLACE (screened first) places us in the company of two arrogant young men who hit on a jobless woman. SANTA CLAUS features Léaud as a smalltime loser who discovers that a Santa Claus suit makes him more attractive to women. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
NOTE: ROBINSON'S PLACE, originally scheduled in the Eustache series for June 1 and June 5, has been cancelled. The only available English-subtitled print has been lost.
It will be replaced by additional screenings of another Eustache short, A DIRTY STORY, which is already scheduled for May 25.
SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES, which forms the other half of the program on June 1 and June 5, will be shown as originally scheduled.