Ma nuit chez Maud aka My Night at Maud's (1969)

The Catholic Jean-Louis, (Jean-Louis Trintignant), runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal (Antoine Vitez), in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud (Françoise Fabian) and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to. in another worlds The "my" in My Night At Maud's belongs to the protagonist played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, a Catholic engineer whose struggle with his faith is renewed when he falls instantly in love with a woman he's never met (Marie-Christine Barrault) while attending mass. A chance meeting with an amoral old friend (Antoine Vitez) the same night places him in a potentially compromising situation when he's forced to spend the night with Vitez's alluring acquaintance Maude (Françoise Fabian), a sophisticated.

In an interview with long-time associate Barbet Schroeder not long before he died , Rohmer identified two traits in his films which he hoped he’d mastered: an easy naturalism and a willingness to present the discussion of ideas. ‘My Night with Maud’ offers both in spades, although those familiar with Rohmer’s breezier but no less inquiring 1980s films might be a little surprised by the rigour and bookishness of this wintry, black-and-white work (the crisp photography of Clermont-Ferrand at Christmas is especially striking). Talk was never cheap in Rohmer’s films; here, some knowledge of Pascal’s Wager and various tenets of Catholicism wouldn’t go amiss if you’re to gain the most from the characters’ intense chats about religion and atheism, chance and determinism, love and desire. But, as ever, Rohmer gives us a playful slice of life which has the effortless air of reality and challenges us to think about life afresh.