Nugget alert!  A colossal failure, this film, unseen for 50 years, is finally released in theaters

Nugget alert! A colossal failure, this film, unseen for 50 years, is finally released in theaters

What is it about?

Daniel was raised by his grandmother in the countryside. He must enter high school and join his mother, who lives with José, an agricultural worker, in Narbonne. But in fact, as an apprentice, his mother enrolled him. Depressed, he mostly frequents the Café des Quatre Fontaines after the start of the school year, where he tries to pose as a teenage model to seduce girls.

A year after the successful release of La Maman et la putain (more than 30,000 admissions for a talky, black-and-white film that runs more than 3 hours), here is a new nugget that has been out of reach for a long time: My Little Lovers, Jean Eustace’s second feature film.

The film director’s work has long been considered “damn“, continues to return to the limelight through a major retrospective that begins this week. In this case, several more of his films stand out, including the rare Dirty Story.

From mother and prostitute scandal to bitter failure

After the great critical and public success of La Maman et la putain, Jean Eustace directed My Little Lovers (originally released on December 18, 1974). This film with a romantic title, a reference to a poem by Rimbaud, tells the story of a young boy’s sentimental adventure.

It is about a boy’s first romantic, even erotic emotions, which is very much inspired by the life of film director Jean Eustace. With Maurice Pialat (L’Enfance nue) or Francois Truffaut (Les 400 coups), Jean Eustace also tries his hand at autobiographical teaching films.

Like the famous Antoine Doisnel, the alter ego of François Truffaut, we follow here the young Daniel, a character between childhood and adolescence, in an initiation story where cinema plays a large role.

As author Alain Philippon, an expert on the cinema of Jean Eustace, author of a book published by Cahiers du Cinéma (in a collection of authors, published in 1986) points out, “Of all Jean Eustace’s films, My Little Lovers contains the most references to cinema“.

Jean Eustace here recalls his first cinematic emotions, and we still smile at some of the lines he uttered: “I don’t like adventure movies, you wouldn’t believe it“or”They’re idiots, Paramount movies“! Funny!

However, My Little Lovers did not suffer the same fate as The 400 Blows. It is even considered a big commercial mark, which the director found it very difficult to overcome.

However, the film has many qualities. This disturbing and very personal story, at the level of a child-adolescent, has, for example, an aesthetic quality that should be emphasized. The great cinematographer Nestor Almendros commissioned his image shot in 35 mm.

A film that may have suffered from a certain radicalism to reach the public (a narrative with few dialogues, even if silent), in contrast to “The Mother and the Whore”. During his short filmography, Jean Eustache always declared:Free movies“, trying to free himself from certain dictates. He remains one of the”The very great French filmmakers who emerged after the Nouvelle Vague“, as Allen Philippon writes.

This retrospective of his work is a rare opportunity to rediscover this very long-buried treasure.


Source: Allocine

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