Composed as an uninterrupted conversation with Jean Eustache’s sprightly, talkative, nearly blind, septuagenarian maternal grandmother, Odette Robert, Numéro Zéro prefigures the studies in narrative construction of Une Sale histoire in its illustration of performance and interpenetrating film reality. Inspired by their conversation during an afternoon stroll, the film reflects Eustache’s assumed role as archivist, creating […]
Droll, charming, and picaresque, Jean Eustache’s Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes chronicles the empty hours, petty capers, and amorous misadventures of Daniel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), an unmotivated (and consequently fired) erstwhile bricklayer and modern day dandy who, rather than admit to his blue collar roots, has concocted an elaborate tale of paternal conspiracy and social consciousness […]
Something of a germinal template for Raymond Depardon’s Profils Paysans films on a dying way of life in rural (and largely forgotten) France, Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol’s reverent, vital, and painstakingly observed ethnographic documentary Le Cochon chronicles a day in the life of peasant farmers in the mountainous region of the Massif Central. In […]
In the autumn of 1990, renowned Spanish artist Antonio Lopez Garcia enters his Madrid studio and begins to assemble a large canvas for his new painting. The subject of his still life is a fruit laden quince tree in the courtyard. Lopez proves to be a meticulous craftsman. He drives three long poles into the […]
A pensive adolescent named Estrella (Icíar Bollaín) awakens at dawn to the alarming sound of barking dogs that progresses to an increasingly audible, anxious commotion downstairs as Estrella’s panicked mother, Julia (Lola Cardona) calls in vain for her husband Agustín (Omero Antonutti) and, upon discovering that he had mysteriously disappeared sometime during the night, awakens […]
A detached, preoccupied scientist, Fernando (Fernando Fernan Gomez), has moved to the provincial tranquility of Castille with his young family in order to devote his time to the study of bees. He spends countless hours at an apiary observing their daily ritual, manipulating their environment, recording the results of his intervention. His wife, Teresa (Teresa […]