Jean Eustache – Films in August and September
Hardly any body of work in French film history is as limited in scope and yet as significant as that of Jean Eustache (1938–1981). Standing at the crossroads between the Nouvelle Vague and its decline, he created cinema of radical sincerity – films that explore speech, desire and failure without ever resorting to euphemism.
Low-barrier, air-conditioned and breastfeeding-friendly
Die Filme von Jean Eustache – Kinemathek Karlsruhe
at the cinema
Original version with German subtitles | (e) English subtitles
Screening with introduction/film talk
Saal Held in the Saal | Box Held in the Box | Foyer Held in the Foyer | Out & about open air & other venues
No matching dates.
August/ Sun 23.
Jean Eustache, FR 1973; 215′
The Mother and the Whore
Jean Eustache, FR 1973; 215′
- Original version with German subtitles
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
August/ Sat 29.
Jean Eustache, FR 1974; 123′
My Little Loves
Jean Eustache, FR 1974; 123′
- Original version with German subtitles
Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after a year of high school, goes to live with his mother in the south of France; a harsher environment which rapidly changes his perception of friends, work, and women.
In August, we will be screening his two feature-length films: La Maman et la Putain (1973), his monumental masterpiece about a ménage-à-trois in post-1968 Paris – three and a half hours of dialogue as a means of survival, which was virtually impossible to see for decades and is now back on the big screen, having been restored. And Mes petites amoureuses (1974), his autobiographically inspired portrait of youth in the French provinces, characterised by both tender precision and quiet cruelty.
In September, we continue the series with three short films: Du côté de Robinson (1964), Eustache’s early portrait of two young men wandering through the Parisian suburbs; Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966), featuring Jean-Pierre Léaud as a young man working as Father Christmas in wintry Narbonne; and Une sale histoire (1977), his unsettling and ambiguous late work, which recounts the same obscene confession twice – once in a documentary style, once as a staged narrative – thereby blurring the line between truth and fiction.