I'd rather watch Maud Adams

If you've read this blog for the 16 years I've been posting about classic cinema, you'll know that one of the things I complain about is the extent to which the limited window we get into foreign, non-English-language cinema is crafted in large part by people with a very arthouse sense of cinema. I couldn't help but think about that when I watched the recording of Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's that I put on my DVR last Christmas.

Jean-Louis Trintignant, who made Z the same year that this movie came out, stars as Jean-Louis, a Catholic college professor who has recently started a new job in the provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand. One Sunday in the run-up to Christmas he goes to Mass and sees a lovely young woman, Françoise, vowing to try to get to know her better. Instead, he runs into an old Marxist friend, Vidal, and the two go out together for a conversation.

Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to Maud, and Jean-Louis ends up going over to Maud's apartment, where the two spend the night together after a long evening of talking. The go out for a walk in the mountains the following day so they can talk some more, but back in town, Jean-Louis runs into Françoise again. Those two talk, and when Jean-Louis offers to take her back to her apartment, he gets stuck on an icy driveway, and is forces to spend the night in a spare room in Françoise's aparment, which gives the two an opportunity to talk some more.

My Night at Maud's is a movie that's filled with talk, and talk, and more talk, and it's the tedious sort of talk that makes My Dinner With Andre seem exciting by comparison. There's nothing going on in terms of action, and no reason to give a damn about any of these self-absorbed characters. The only good thing about the movie is the location shooting in Clermont-Ferrand. Watching My Night at Maud's gave me the distinct feeling that not only are the French different, they're different from America in a way that's much more different than the rest of Europe is different from the US. Even with something like the Czech New Wave Daisies that I didn't really care for, I didn't get the same sense of dealing with a completely different culture.

And yet, it baffles me reading the reviews and seeing how many people think something like My Night at Maud's is truly great. I can't help but wonder if it's the sort of guff where a certain class of people feels the need to praise it in order to look smart. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a bomb is just a bomb.