My Night at Maud's (1969, Eric Rohmer) (Patreon)

76/100

Second viewing, last seen 1998. Hadn't yet discovered Hong at the time—he'd only made two films, both of which I caught up with later—but this now looks like the structural template for his entire early career. (Turning Gate in particular practically qualifies as an uncredited remake.) Rohmer's soju, however, is philosophy, and here he audaciously builds his cerebral version of a romcom around Pascal's wager, creating a heady Rorschach test of a movie. While I definitely have a preferred interpretation (to be outlined below), it wouldn't trouble me to learn that my view isn't widely shared, nor even that Rohmer intended something entirely different; My Night at Maud's deliberately counterweights Catholicism with catholicism, sidestepping dogma in either direction. At the same time, though, this film is formally meticulous to a degree that acolytes like Hong never even attempt to replicate. For all its erudite verbosity, there are arguably more shots of people attentively listening than there are of people talking—at the very least, Rohmer includes enough of them to create that impression, which is itself a conscious strategy. One medium close-up of Maud is held so long, as Trintignant* prattles on out of frame, that I began to wonder whether perhaps Rohmer had filmed what was essentially B-roll of Fabian doing her best Kuleshov gaze, which he could splice in as needed...but then she responds in real time, without a cut, confirming that the exchange was conceived that way. (Rohmer could have shot the reverse angle and chosen not to use it, I suppose, but that just doesn't seem likely, somehow.) 

Anyway, back to Blaise Pascal, in keeping with these dudes' fixation. To his credit, Rohmer doesn't manufacture an obvious romantic correlative to the wager, and I can easily imagine somebody else perceiving Trintignant's actions as a necessary acceptance, the only truly logical course. To me, however—and hopefully this will answer a friend's question about how Maud's could appeal to a staunch atheist like myself—this is the dryly tragic story of a man who marries not so much for convenience as for insurance, ignoring his marrow-deep compatibility with a different woman out of fear that she'll make him roll snake eyes in the eternal casino. (Late Marriage employs a similar dynamic, substituting family duty for religious fervor.) Maud professes not to be interested, but I don't believe her for a second, if only because there are few sexier moments in cinema than the one in which Trintignant's plan to sleep chastely in an armchair inspires her to lean toward him and whisper the single word "idiot." And the contrast between that impromptu slumber party and sa nuit chez Françoise** could scarcely be more stark: When Trintignant knocks on the latter's door to ask for some matches, her expression is wary verging on hostile—so much so that it's a surprise to see them together again later on, much less learn that she's ostensibly in love with him. That the two women are revealed to have been previously connected doesn't really jibe with this reading, I'll concede (and I'm not enamored of that coincidence regardless, small town though they keep repeating that it is), but the crossed-paths ending still works beautifully as a what-if? And so began a glorious tradition of heterosexual men who keep trying until they finally get it wrong, or occasionally right now, wrong then.

* The credits give "Jean-Louis" as the protagonist's name, but is it ever actually spoken? I don't think it is. Seems like Rohmer just used Trintignant's own name rather than go with "L'homme" or something. 

** Another potentially confusing name issue, since Françoise Fabian plays Maud; I mean Françoise the character (Marie-Christine Barrault).