My Night at Maud's

Ma nuit chez Maud; drama, France, 1969; D: Eric Rohmer, S: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Francoise Fabian, Antoine Vitez, Marie-Christine Barrault, Guy Léger

The introverted engineer Jean-Louis wants to be a noble Catholic. He meets the blond Francoise in a church, but is too shy to talk to her. Around Christmas, he makes friends with Vidal, they go to a diner, a concert, and then visit Vidal's extroverted, open-minded friend, Maud. She sends her little daughter to bed, and then her conversations with Jean-Louis and Vidal continue well into the winter night since Maud is very interested in Jean-Louis' opinions. When it starts to snow, Vidal leaves the apartment, while Jean-Louis and Maud stay alone. Her open minded views fascinate him so he sleeps over at her place. The next morning, he changes and meets Francoise with whom he gets married. Five years later, he again meets Maud one day.

The most beautiful film by Eric Rohmer is a relaxed drama that subtly showed a discussion about the views on sexuality, human relationships and Pascal, getting nominated for several awards. At first the story deceivingly seems like a usual talkative melodrama, but things quickly start to stir up when protagonists Jean-Louis and Vidal enter Maud's apartment 25 minutes into the film: the minute she changes into her pyjamas with a mini skirt (as Vidal jokingly adds: "Aha, you wanted to show us your legs." - "It's the only means of seduction I have." - "Not the only. But the principal.") and invites them to stay at her place, does the movie transform into a magical event with such an ease. When Vidal leaves and the shy Jean-Louis stays alone with Maud the whole night it's as if the whole story climbs up a notch in brilliance even more. Their conversations are so honest, so direct and so fascinating that Rohmer managed to do the impossible, to invite the viewer to join the intimate experience of the two in the apartment. Jean-Louis is fascinated by her open-minded views and they talk about several things, like about Christians whose reputation is more important to them than their faith, until she finally invites him to sleep the night over in her bed, though he is initially reluctant ("Are you afraid? Of yourself? Or of me?"). That is almost a mythical achievement that creates everything through mood. If the whole film had revolved just around that main 40-minute middle part, and disposed the subplots—the tiresome opening act and weak ending, which feels like a boring, anticlimactic 40-minute epilogue that lost its purpose after the night at Maud's ended—and improved some flaws (not all dialogues are equally as interesting, since a fair share of them feels like an 'empty walk'), it would have been a greater film, but even in this version it speaks volumes about human relationships.

Grade:+++