The Mother and the Whore (Anne ve Fahişe)

Written and directed by Jean Eustache, La Maman et la Putain (The Mother and the Whore) is a 1973 French feature revolving around a love triangle in Paris in the aftermath of May 1968. Alexandre, an idle young man who spends his days drinking in cafés and debating literature and cinema with friends, lives in an open relationship with Marie, his older lover. When he meets Véronika, a young Polish nurse, at a café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he becomes infatuated with her and starts drifting between the two women, until the triangle forces him toward a choice. Shot in black and white between May and July 1972 and running close to three and a half hours, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun. It was Eustache's first feature, drawing on his own relationships, and premiered at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Initially divisive among critics, it has since been embraced as his masterpiece and a landmark of French cinema.