Les Mauvaises Fréquentations

A typical and unremarkable film from the genre of "boulevard anabasis," which was the sandbox for future giants in the early days of the French New Wave, where they experimented with creative techniques and learned the craft. Eustache - although in 1963 it was already quite outdated, it must be noted – also created a simple story about two friends wandering around Paris and chasing girls. Shortly before that, he assisted Rohmer on his The Bakery Girl of Monceau and borrowed from him that slightly moralizing and reproachful tone that characterizes this first completed film by Eustache, despite its overall light-hearted irony. It is all the more surprising that the director's subsequent film Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (1967), for which Godard supposedly lent him the film material, is even simpler in this regard, and the main character, played by J. P. Léaud, is a typical adolescent character whose only purpose is to spend time in cafés and nostalgically humorously chase young Parisian girls for the viewer. It is really not much for 1967, although Eustache was able to occasionally demonstrate a greater sense for the camera in both of his first films compared to the aforementioned Rohmer. (16.01.2016)