I love the French New Wave; particularly the early films that, viewed in context, feel like they’re changing the possibilities of cinema instantly before your eyes. Eric Rohmer’s My night at Maud’s (1969) is something different though. This was my first Rohmer, and it won’t be my last, but I didn’t get from this film what I got from Breathless (1960) or Jules and Jim (1962). Those two pictures are often cited as some of the finest ever made, and certainly as two of the seminal works of the New Wave movement, so a comparison here might seem harsh.
It seems natural to want to compare these works, as all critics are want to do, but I don’t believe that Rohmer was trying to do the same things that his contemporaries had done. This is not a film based in technique or the expression of lives and lifestyles so contrary to the bourgeois. By the time this film was made those ideas were old hat within the movement. This film instead seems to be a reaction to those masterpieces which preceded it. Characters here sit and talk and worry that perhaps they embody all of those bourgeois clichés. I don’t think that they do, in fact I’d say that the primary character defies movie clichés too, but they worry about it nonetheless.
Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a Catholic. Despite the secularization of the world around him he still believes. He is neither zealot nor saint, as the film details, but he does hope to one day settle down with a Catholic girl (preferably a blonde) and raise a family. He’s in no hurry. Early in the film he tells the audience through voiceover of a premonition he has about another frequent communicant in his parish. She is lovely and he thinks of her, but is unsure each time he sees her if it will be the last. He has never even approached her.
Working as an engineer, Jean-Louis fills his days as best he can after work. He is new to the region and has few acquaintances. He has taken to studying mathematics and philosophy in his spare time. One night, by chance, he happens upon an old friend from high school, Vidal (Antoine Vitez). As they discuss the probability that they would meet again after so many years they begin to broach subjects of fate and faith. Vidal is an atheist, and though Jean-Louis has no interest in converting him, he asks him to join him for Christmas Mass.
After the service the two end up at the apartment of the friend and sometimes lover of Vidal, Maud (Franciose Fabian). She is beautiful and kind, but complains to Jean-Louis and Vidal of her unlucky streak with men. The three talk and talk and talk, and eventually, through circumstance, Jean-Louis must spend the night sleeping with Maud. He resists her, then she resists him, and though nothing really happens by the time he leaves he feels somehow different than he did the day before.
Many of Rohmer’s biggest critics complain that his films are nothing but conversations, and, here at least, their summations are correct. But these are some of the deeper conversations you’re likely to hear at the movies. This has to be because of these characters. They are neither heroes nor villains, but simply people living their lives, trying to find meaning. Somehow Jean-Louis finds great meaning in this night, which in the film’s epilogue he refers to as his “last fling.” This is an odd movie. It has so little of what we think of when we think of motion pictures, and yet it has so much more as well. There are no guns or explosions or speeches or sweeping statements about politics. Even the sparse voiceover doesn’t give terrific insight into Jean-Louis’ thoughts. Yet there is a message here of some kind. It is not hopeful or despairing or sweeping either, but it is true. Life is as it is whether you believe in fate or in God or in nothing, it carries on. So few are the moments in this life that we can pinpoint, and say that then we were changed. This is the story of such a moment, and in that it is a success.
Grade 2.5 Hats Off
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