Jean Eustache (1938-1981) was a gifted French director whose works seemed to capture much of the energy and ambivalence of youth. The Mother and the Whore is his mammoth account of three not-so-young survivors of the sixties sexual revolution, castaways adrift in a sea of talk in Paris. Jean-Pierre Leaud spends almost the entire 210 minutes dangling between two women--his girlfriend (Bernadette Lafont), and a free-and-easy nurse (Françoise Lebrun)--and two conceptions of women: the mother and the whore. The film is an important exploration of sexism that consciously implicates itself in the process. But language is probably the central concern of The Mother and the Whore; like Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's, it presents hour upon hour of talk--fascinating, funny, sad, confessional, conversational, philosophical talk that is an invigorating and essential aspect of the film's atmosphere. Jean-Pierre Gorin writes, “The film has its own flavor: it smells of croissants chauds and cafe au lait at the Flore, it sounds like the Rue de Buci's market... in short, St. Germain des Pres as if you'd been yawnin' all your life away in its streets. As a bonus, some superb acting....”