A Dirty Story

The film is in two parts and both tell the same story. A man tells a small group something: that he found a hole in the lavatory of a bar and began watching women through it, and that after a while it became the centre of his life. The listeners ask questions, argue, laugh. In the first part the man telling it is an actor and the text is written. In the second the man telling it is the person it happened to, and the conversation was recorded as documentary. Jean Eustache directs. The idea is to test telling itself. The same text is heard twice and the viewer notices which sounds more convincing; the part performed by the actor usually comes out stronger. Eustache stands on his own in French cinema; he made few films and in all of them worked at the act of narration. The subject is uncomfortable and the film does not soften it; the narrative neither condemns nor absolves, it records. It is short and consists entirely of talk; visually almost nothing happens. The order of the two parts can change between screenings, and that changes the effect. Who it is for: anyone interested in French experimental cinema and the line between documentary and fiction. Who it is not for: the subject is uncomfortable, the film is all talk, and nothing happens.