A great Rohmer "moral tale" in which all the action is cerebral: My Night at Maud's

Eric Rhomer's 1969 film, My Night at Maud's, is unmistakably in Rohmer's style, quintessentially French, and still a really great movie though by no means for all viewers. The movie, centered on a 34-year-old engineer, Jean-Marie (Jean-Marie Trintagnant) living quietly and alone in the mountain city of Cleremont. He's a practicing if not quite devout Catholic, and at the outset we see him in church where he espies a beautiful young congregant and thinks that someday he will marry her. Shortly after, he runs into a friend from childhood now working as a philosophy prof in a local university. Over coffee, the 2, in their very French manner, engage in a lengthy conversation about Pascal and religious faith; J-M says that as a believer he cannot and engage in casual sex, nor has he ever - though he has had several long relationships w/ women whom he loved, but these relationships dissolved. We can see by this point that this will be no action-packed film - though it is full of intellectual action and intelligent, adult discussion about love and sex and family and religion. The pfor friend takes J-M to meet a young divorcee whom he has occasionally dated - the eponymous Maud - the long threesome dinner-date at Maud's place becomes increasingly tense and odd, especially when the prof rather abruptly leaves and Maud invites J-M to spend the night (rather than drive home in a snow storm). Reluctantly, he agrees; the night is full of moral challenges, as he refuses M's advances and invitations and spends an extremely uncomfortable night wrapped in a blanket. Further incidents ensue, which I will not divulge - but suffice to say that there are a few interesting twists as the movie builds toward its final scene, several years down the road. Rohmer calls this the 3rd of his so-called "moral tales," and I guess this one is a test of a man's struggle to live up to his ethical beliefs - without being a prude or a monk. The film has a slight echo of the first of the "moral tales," The Bakery Girl from Monceau, a Rohmer short from 1963, in which a law student falls in love with a beautiful girl he sees on the street but knows nothing about - as does Jean-Marie in My Night at Maud's - though in the Bakery Girl the moral dilemma is not as acute or profound, just a question of should he ditch a less promising relationship when his dream-girl becomes available (that's just young love in action, not a moral crisis).