On a new episode of the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re excited to present a conversation with actress Françoise Lebrun, who appeared in Jean Eustache’s 1973 masterpiece, The Mother and the Whore, and Charles Gillibert, the producer of the film’s new restoration. The Mother and the Whore will be opening in our theaters in a new 4K restoration as part of “The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache,” a 12-film retrospective of the French director’s work, from June 23–July 13, courtesy of FLC and Janus Films. Tickets are on sale now.
After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May 1968 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache’s own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.
Lebrun and Gillibert spoke with FLC Senior Director of Programming Florence Almozini following a screening of the film in the Revivals section of the 60th New York Film Festival. Watch and listen below.
