. The idea that there is one Woman, and she ismother, saint, and whore, is a subtext in much of cinema. In Jean Eustache'smasterpiece, it is text. Set in Paris, this is the mammoth account of threenot-so-young castaways from the sixties and the sexual revolution. Jean-PierreLéaud is at the center of the maelstrom for nearly the entire 210 minutesas a perpetually unattached café denizen who waffles between two women-hisgirlfriend, with whom he lives, and a free-and-easy nurse he brings home. And hedangles between two conceptions of Woman, the mother and the whore; it is hisparticular cross, although Eustache hardly deifies him. Rather, the film makes animportant statement on sexism and is not afraid to implicate itself in all thequestions and condemnations that this evokes. This is a film about language, andabout sex as a language. The talk is funny, sad, scatological, monological,confessional, conversational, philosophical, electric, and essential.