Word: maud
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...knee, actually. Or so says Author-Director Eric Rohmer (My Night at Maud's). As always, Rohmer remains resolutely out of style. People go to bed and talk-only talk-the whole night through. The quarry always contrives to keep the pursuer in view. Politesse is stressed; sexual desire hovers about conversations, but some things are just not spoken in mixed company...
...Nuit Chez Maud. Eric Rohmer wrote and directed this drama about the basic choices people make to determine the quality of their lives. Set in a claustrophobic French town and loaded with conversation about Pascal and Catholicism, this movie is so well done that it makes all its points in the camera work and in the performances of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Francoise Fabian. The involved dialogue is merely an added...
...Point of view shots take on an austere, dialectical frontality, especially in dialogue sequences where Jean-Louis often speaks off-camera to the image on screen. The mere groupings of figures in a landscape have a definite significance in Rohmer's style. Not until after Trintignant's night with Maud, after he has decided to marry Francoise (whom he hasn't met yet), can he be grouped comfortably with others in a frame. Foggy, wintry outdoors scenes, hazy skylines, and claustrophobic interiors convey the hermetically sealed environment within which he must construct his life. Only after considerable resolution...
...narrow milieu does not only limit, however; it also increases the probability of the chance encounters on which the narrative of Ma Nuit Chez Maud is based. Jean-Louis counts on chance. luck. And his luck is good because he scientifically applies his will to it, as when he picks up his wife-to-be with the full intention of marrying her. Comprehending his possibilities and limitations, he can neither renounce the world and become a saint, nor marry Maud. who is a free-thinker. Either way, to want everything or nothing, you've got to be crazy...
...political or moral. Both films, however, resist solutions as well. How complete a human clarity is possible remains always questionable. With all his worrying about how to live, about his personal beliefs and his clear conscience, Jean-Louis fails to make an important human perception about the connection between Maud and Francoise, which his scientific outlook has made predictable and obvious. An imperfect system, perhaps? Human error? The dialectic never ends...