The Cinematheque

“Among the finest films made in France or any other country in the last half century.”

Kent Jones, Film Comment

We Will Not Grow Old Together, Maurice Pialat’s remarkable second feature, is an uncompromising study of the break-up of a relationship, and is based on a scathing, unsparing autobiographical novel written by the director. Pialat look-alike Jean Yanne was named Best Actor at Cannes for his performance as Jean, a selfish and domineering filmmaker still living with his estranged wife (Macha Méril), but involved for six years now with Catherine (Marlène Jobert), a younger working-class woman. The disintegration of this long-term affair is charted in a series of potent and perceptive episodes, in which painful recriminations alternate with tearful reconciliations.

In French with English subtitles

“[A] fiercely impassioned, impulsively modernist melodrama … Pialat captures the push-and-pull of their impossible relationship with pugnacious images and abrupt editing.” Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Austerely devastating … Don’t pass up this chance to catch it on the big screen. Be warned, though: It’s deeply upsetting, featuring the kind of emotional brutality we just don’t see in movies anymore.” New York Magazine

preceded by

Janine
France 1961
Maurice Pialat
17 min. DCP In French with English subtitles

This early Pialat short, written by and featuring future L’enfance nue producer Claude Berri, chronicles a desultory night in Saint-Denis for two men, a young romantic and jaded misogynist, sharing opposing ideas about the women in their lives.