One of the few really great French movies of theseventies, The Mother and the Whore is Jean Eustache's mammoth account of threenot-so-young people adrift in a sea of talk in Paris, castaways of the sixtiesand the sexual revolution. Jean-Pierre Léaud, at the center of themaelstrom for nearly the entire 210 minutes, delivers an awesome performance asan unattached cafe denizen who dangles between two women- his girlfriend and afree-and-easy nurse-and two conceptions of Woman, the mother and the whore.Eustache's film makes an important statement on sexism, and it is not afraid toimplicate itself in that same sexism. But the central concern of the film isperhaps language, in hour upon hour of talk-fascinating, funny, sad,scatological, monological, confessional, conversational, philosophical-talk soelectric and essential that it makes one redefine one's notions of whatconstitutes "pure" cinema.