My Night at Maud's
d. Eric Rohmer, 1969
Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's is as close to perfect a film as I've seen in a long time; its sidelong beauty is apparent as soon as the film opens. For a film so notable for its dialogue, the first couple of sequences My Night at Maud's are filled with silence. We watch as Rohmer films Jean-Louis, his anti-hero of sorts, go to church an spot a girl that he likes, soon thereafter (while he follows her) he vows to marry her. The rest of the film plays out like a series of some of the greatest scenes in all movies. While watching the film, everything falls into place; after it was over, however, I found a lot of what went on to be much more ambiguous, only more reason to rewatch this wonderful film. Rohmer's direction here is almost invisible and completely unobstrusive; his most radical stylistic choice is the way he sometimes focuses on one character in a conversation instead of framing both of the participants. Not since I first came to Truffaut's Jules and Jim have I felt this way about a movie.
