Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud 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.
My Night at Maud's is one of Rohmer's finest Moral Tales — a film where philosophical dialogue IS the action, grounded in Pascal's wager and Catholic ethics played against Marxist libertinism. The black-and-white cinematography by Néstor Almendros is exquisite, lending a wintry austerity perfectly matched to the intellectual and emotional temperature. The performances, particularly Jean-Louis Trintignant and Françoise Fabian, are naturalistic and utterly convincing. The film is singular in its conception — few films make theological and mathematical argument this cinematically alive. The ending, while thematically satisfying in its ironic disclosure of fate and self-deception, is the one element that functions more as a quiet punctuation mark than a fully resonant conclusion, earning a slight step back from the film's otherwise exceptional standard.