The Mother and the Whore

Saw The Mother and the Whore, a film which, in spite of its saucy title, I found to be quite dull. It follows the adventures of this dude whose main means of support is from his girlfriend. He wanders around 1970s Paris, always hitting on some woman. He has long conversations in cafes about not much at all. He is an intellectual dilettante, more interested in pretty thoughts and little phrases that you have to think about before discovering that they're bullshit. Now, it may be that in these discursions lies the heart of the film and I'm just too tired/dumb to see it, but it felt like shallow sophistication and Oscar Wildean "paradox." I believe I'm reading his character correctly in any case. At one point he's flipping through a book on the German S.S. and lightly quipping about the pictures in it. He then turns to a page where an officer is lynching a woman and hastily puts the book down before changing the subject. From this I gather that, for all his refinement, he's more comfortable toying with ideas than actually coming to grips with them.

So anyway, his girlfriend is long-suffering and tolerates his womanizing with relative grace (she has this ironic hipster thing going on. Either due to suppression or malaise, nothing seems to really reach her.) She provides shelter and emotional support to him in exchange for being tossed a bone once in a while. She is clearly the mother of the title. (I was wondering at first if she played the dual role of both mother and whore or if he was supposed to be the whore, but I was wrong.) He hooks up with a nurse who treats him like the amusing sack of meat he treats his usual hookups as. She discusses his anatomy with clinical precision and later Freudianly penetrates him with a shot of vitamin-C. She is also kind of a man-eater, being the titular whore and all. She is irresponsible but a lot of fun. So, he has two women who love him, both of whom he loves. What's a guy to do?

Well, the answer is talk endlessly and drunkenly about sex and love, obviously. The film climaxes in an hour-long makeout-session/chat-a-thon which I had to take in 15-minute segments (the whole movie is 3.5 hours long. I knew I wouldn't have the attention span going in.) It tries to be very transgressive and progressive but it's a bit tame to anyone who is aware that women also enjoy sex and that polyamorous relationships exist. Also there's boobs a-plenty, so whoop-de-doo. There's meta-level references to acting, roles, and films which is typical of French New Wave. This in particular suggests to me that there is something deeper that I'm missing here. There's also plenty to be said about the protagonist's fraught relationship with both women and with womankind in general, but unfortunately there is nothing to be said which I care about. It's devoid of the mind-games that I like and not very gripping either and so whatever there is to grasp slipped entirely through my fingers. Approach with caution.