The Mother and the Whore (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

The loves of an irresponsible Parisian youth with leftist intellectual affections provides the basis of this intense, devastating character study. In many ways, Alexandre, the protagonist, symbolizes the sense of alienation and anguished self-blame espoused by the post-war existentialists. Yet, in other regards, Alexandre is also a harbinger of materialism, the resulting idealistic void of the early 1970s in which the story is set. Leaud decides that he desperately needs a wife and so leave...