The Virgin of Pessac

The Virgin of Pessac / La Rosière de Pessac

Jean Eustache, France, 1968, 65’ 

During the French student protests of May 1968, Eustache’s first documentary closely follows the century-old tradition of the annual selection of the “most virtuous” girl in the village. 

From the Slovenian Cinematheque archive.

Shot in 1968 with the mayor’s permission, the ethnographic almost-comedy profiles the surreal, community-consuming campaign to crown the most ​“virtuous” woman in the village. The criteria: be of marriageable age, a virgin, and a paragon of modesty and moral upstanding. The proceedings, captured with unfussy, observational directness, reveal the petty hypocrisies and political high-handedness of the centuries-old tradition, made especially anachronistic against the tumult of May ​’68. 

“The sum of Eustache’s life behind the camera, barely 15 years, needs to be recognized as more than The Mother and the Whore. It comprises an extraordinarily multifaceted collection of films, works uncompromised, completely his, devoted to the working-through of his self-reproaches and idiosyncratic little loves.” Nick Pinkerton, Moving Image Source 

“He stands alone … One of cinema’s most fêted yet unfamiliar auteurs.” Martine Pierquin, Sight and Sound 

A towering figure in world cinema, Jean Eustache’s legacy is built upon the formidable reputation of The Mother and the Whore (1973), a dialogue-heavy chronicle of a messy ménage à trois that Cahiers du Cinéma named the best film of the 1970s. His eclectic filmography contains just one more feature film, My Little Loves (1974), along with several documentaries and shorts. Eustache’s filmmaking style often involved an autobiographical approach. Despite a relatively short career, he left a lasting impact upon French cinema. 

In collaboration with the Slovenian Cinematheque.