Made with leftover film given to him by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Eustache interwove the stock from the former director's 'Masculin/Feminin' with his own 52-minute study of a group of young men in a small French province and their attempts to earn money and meet girls. Jean-Pierre Leaud (who starred in both films) is Daniel, the protagonist/narrator. As in the Doinel films by Truffaut, Leaud acts as a sort of alter ego figure for Eustache. Desperate to buy a stylish winter coat, Daniel accepts a local photographer's offer to dress up as a sidewalk Santa Claus to pose for photos with passerby. Once his identity is concealed in costume, Daniel discovers, the town's inhabitants treat him far differently; namely, attention from the girls who'd earlier brushed him off. An amusing document of a few days in the life of small-town French youth.
2 Reviews
Santa's New Wave.
morrison-dylan-fan12 January 2021
Warning: Spoilers
After the wicked Comedy Santa Claus Is a Stinker (1982-also reviewed) I decided to check for what other French X-Mas-set films I had waiting to be watched. Finding this to be a title with a runtime of under a hour,I got set to discover how blue Santa's eyes are.
View on the film:
Sown together from scraps of leftover film stock he got from Jean-Luc Godard, writer/directing auteur Jean Eustache unwraps a French New Wave (FNW) X-Mas tale soaked in a brine pessimism atmosphere of grainy FNW fluid tracking shots walking down the streets with the Santa-dressed Daniel.
Going pass a cinema screening The 400 Blows (1959), Eustache keeps Daniel jolly with the rawness of the FNW, in what appears to be illegally filmed sequences bringing a in the moment grit,thanks to a overlapping soundtrack,where speeding cars on the street drown out parts of Daniel's conversations.
Initially taking the job as Santa in order to raise cash to buy a jacket just before Christmas, the screenplay by Eustache unzips Daniel's jacket to study his frustration at not having a partner, which Eustache does not romanticise, instead biting Daniel with a cynical Vampirism, that reveals itself in this FNW loner having a abusive impulsive side lash out to any woman who gives any hint of affection, to a Santa with blue eyes.
View on the film:
Sown together from scraps of leftover film stock he got from Jean-Luc Godard, writer/directing auteur Jean Eustache unwraps a French New Wave (FNW) X-Mas tale soaked in a brine pessimism atmosphere of grainy FNW fluid tracking shots walking down the streets with the Santa-dressed Daniel.
Going pass a cinema screening The 400 Blows (1959), Eustache keeps Daniel jolly with the rawness of the FNW, in what appears to be illegally filmed sequences bringing a in the moment grit,thanks to a overlapping soundtrack,where speeding cars on the street drown out parts of Daniel's conversations.
Initially taking the job as Santa in order to raise cash to buy a jacket just before Christmas, the screenplay by Eustache unzips Daniel's jacket to study his frustration at not having a partner, which Eustache does not romanticise, instead biting Daniel with a cynical Vampirism, that reveals itself in this FNW loner having a abusive impulsive side lash out to any woman who gives any hint of affection, to a Santa with blue eyes.
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