Directed by Jean Eustache • 1979 • France
A decade after making THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC, Jean Eustache filmed another documentary about his hometown’s annual coronation of a young woman of moral integrity. The differences between the two portraits of the same ritual are subtle yet telling: The selection process is slightly more fraught in the 1970s, as civic leaders are more concerned with the current economic depression than with broader social upheaval. In THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC 79, the ceremony also provides a stage on which progressive changes are made official, with a local order, the Fellows of Pleasant Pessac, inducting their first female member. Finally, the second time around, Eustache employs color photography, an appropriate choice given the event’s verdant spring setting.
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Alix’s Pictures
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1980 • France
Starring Alix Clio-Roubaud, Boris EustacheWinner of the 1982 César Award for Best Short Film, ALIX’S PICTURES is Jean Eustache’s playful meditation on the ambiguity of images and the elusiveness of interpretation. In a room, a young woman (Alix Cléo Rou...
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Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1981 • France
The French television series “Les enthousiastes” asked art aficionados to offer their thoughts on, and interpretations of, paintings that they themselves selected. For Jean Eustache’s episode, Jean-Noël Picq (of A DIRTY STORY) chose the third panel of Hi...
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Employment Offer
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1982 • France
Starring Michel Delahaye, Jean Douchet, Bertrand Van EffenterreJean Eustache’s final film—commissioned for the French television series “Contes modernes” (“Modern Tales”)—is a sharp satire of contemporary man’s dehumanization at the hands of specialized...
