My Night At Maud's
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Movie Reviews of My Night At Maud's
Movie Review: YOU SHALL NOT ...
Summary: 5 Stars
How to find the right words to make you want to discover french author/director Eric Rohmer ? I would lie if I'd say MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is an action movie. It's not a boring arty work either. Eric Rohmer is a very peculiar case among french directors. He's interested in morals, in the deep psychology of his movies' characters, in literature and philosophical problems. Vast program, rich but not rebarbative at all.MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is the third of the six moral tales he shot in the sixties and early seventies. The action takes place in Clermont-Ferrand, in southern France. Jean-Louis Trintignant (leading actor of Lelouch's A MAN AND A WOMAN) is a catholic 34 years old man looking for a girl to marry. Observing a young blonde girl at the Mass celebration, he decides she will be the one.
His friend Antoine Vitez invites him to pass an evening at Françoise "MAUD" Fabian's place. Light dialogs become soon a conversation about the Grace, the Predestination, the Sin and the Faith. Antoine Vitez leaves and let the not-so puritan Trintignant alone with a Maud still chatting and lying in bed almost naked.
Will Trintignant succumb to the charm of Maud or be faithful to the blonde girl he hasn't had the chance to meet yet ? That's the moral point of the movie. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is a 1968 movie, shot in black and white with english subtitles you can't remove (!), that has won two Oscars. I sincerely hope you'll have the curiosity to take a look at it since 5 or 6 Rohmer's movies have hit the DVD market these last months, all of them being pure gems. Oh yes ! I forgot. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is one of these movies that can deeply change in you the way you approach movies.
Take the risk to consider MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S as a DVD for your library.
Movie Review: Rohmer at His Best
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the fourth and best of Eric Rohmer's six moral tales. Like many of Rohmer's films, "My Night at Maud's" is about the search for a life-partner, temptation and fidelity. Also, like most Rohmer films, "My Night at Maud's" is made up mainly of conversation's, and some might find it "boring" or "just talking." But the conversations are interesting and intellectually stimulating, and, at the films end, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.An engineer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) becomes infatuated with a woman he sees in Church (Marie-Christine Barrault). But before he is able to ask her out, he spends the night at the apartment of Maud (Francoise Fabian) trying to be faithful to his Catholic values by resisting her attempts at seduction. (I won't spoil the film by telling you how his night with Maud ends.) He later meets, dates, and eventually marries the woman from Church. Years later, after running into Maud at the beach, he discovers that his wife has a connection to Maud. (Again, I won't spoil the film by telling you what it is.)
Movie Review: For those who like this sort of thing...
Summary: 5 Stars
...this is the sort of thing that we love.
A movie about those odd conversations we have when we dance around desire, not sure whether to give in or get out. Nuanced to the nth degree, taking its script from situations we all probably recognize, it's a meditative film, ultimately, that offers us a view into ourselves and our desires.
But it's a quiet film (not a single car blows up in its whole duration!) so it might not be a good choice for a plurality of American viewers.
That's not meant as faint praise, not at all. I just mean to say that this is a beautiful film to look at (and the Fox Lorber DVD does it good justice) but, thinky as it is, it maintains a low key throughout that might make certain viewers nervous. Those who are ready for a cerebral film chock full of small insights will love it, though. A product of an era in which the idea of personal "comprehension" was interesting and entertaining, "My Night at Maud's" is something of a landmark, one that should be better known.
Movie Review: The head vs. the heart
Summary: 5 Stars
Eric Rohmer's intelligent look at the subject of principles vs. intuition. A mathemetician (Jean-Louis) meets an old school chum (Vidal), a philosopher, and they begin a conversation about Pascal and mind over heart and faithfulness. The conversation continues at Vidal's girlfriend's (Maud) house.
Suddenly our mathemetician is left alone with the Maud, and she invites him to spend the night with her. He accepts but is determined not to sleep with her to maintain his priciples, and in a very funny scene he's successful. After a while he marries Francoise; 5 years later he meets Maud again and learns, by accident, that Francoise was once Maud's husband's lover.
Typical for a Rohmer film, not much happens, but there's lots of talk of a very high quality. But it's not JUST talk - Rohmer is skilled enough not to forget he's making a movie here. He is very on target as his characters explore the topics at hand. It's a very satisfying movie, well worth a watch.
Movie Review: This film is so tight!
Summary: 5 Stars
Sublime. To me, this stealthily thrilling film exploits both the living quality of a theatrical performance and the privileged intimacy that cinema offers -- close-ups, mobile perspectives, and so on. Rohmer's tale seems put together to resemble a peculiarly intrusive documentary, an impossibly close piece of observational cinema. Half the joy of experiencing his fiction stems from the convincing impression that one is (secretly) watching a group of interesting adults socializing spontaneously in the manner of their culture and class. The other half of one's pleasure lies in the awareness, as the film concludes, that an intricate and subtle structure has been unfolding and cleverly weaving the tale's elements together all along. Rohmer's film works on several levels, and is well worth viewing by the socially curious and the open-minded.