My Night at Maud's

My Night at Maud's

Synopsis

“The third of Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” and his first international hit, My Night at Maud’s centers around a serious young Catholic engineer who, over the course of several days around Christmas, explores the intersection of chance and choice in his life. Adjusting to a lonely life in provincial Clermont-Ferrand after years living abroad, he finds himself torn between the woman chance has thrown him together with and one he has never met but instinctively believes to be his ideal. The film’s centerpiece is the titular night, which the snowbound Jean-Louis Trintignant spends with a charming, agnostic divorcee, sharing ideas about philosophy and life and, eventually, her bed. Pascal’s Pensées figures heavily in their circular and sparkling debates about religion, marriage and free will." – Harvard Film Archive