Directed by Jean Eustache • 1977 • France
Starring Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Noël Picq, Laurie Zimmer
Deceptively simple in form and content, Jean Eustache’s A DIRTY STORY is a fascinatingly complex investigation of the relationship between fiction and documentary, verbal and visual storytelling, and personal and universal desires. The film’s two sections mirror each other: in the first, Michael Lonsdale performs the role of a man explaining to a roomful of friends his past voyeuristic obsessions, while the second section shows an unscripted recording of Jean-Noël Picq, the man Lonsdale plays, recounting the same real-life tale. Eustache presents dramatic and authentic versions of the “dirty story” without authorial commentary and thus encourages the viewer to untangle a web of structural correspondences between the narrations, as well as the sexual and moral implications of Picq’s candid confession.
Up Next in Directed by Jean Eustache
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The Virgin of Pessac 79
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1979 • France
A decade after making THE VIRGIN OF PESSAC, Jean Eustache filmed another documentary about his hometown’s annual coronation of a young woman of moral integrity. The differences between the two portraits of the same ritual are subtle yet telling: The sele...
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Alix’s Pictures
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1980 • France
Starring Alix Clio-Roubaud, Boris EustacheWinner of the 1982 César Award for Best Short Film, ALIX’S PICTURES is Jean Eustache’s playful meditation on the ambiguity of images and the elusiveness of interpretation. In a room, a young woman (Alix Cléo Rou...
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Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights
Directed by Jean Eustache • 1981 • France
The French television series “Les enthousiastes” asked art aficionados to offer their thoughts on, and interpretations of, paintings that they themselves selected. For Jean Eustache’s episode, Jean-Noël Picq (of A DIRTY STORY) chose the third panel of Hi...
