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In a French village near Bordeaux, Pessac, a young lady is chosen for her virtue by the townspeople.
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This is the first version that Eustache shot. The second version will be shot 10 years after. May ’68 will have been replaced in the conversations by the unemployment and crisis…Read More »
As political and social tumult rocked France in May and June of 1968, Jean Eustache used his first documentary to focus on persistent tradition, in the form of a centuries-old ceremony in his hometown of Pessac. Each year, Pessac’s civic leaders choose a young woman they consider an exemplar of moral virtue, with a daylong celebration commemorating the changing of the guard from the previous year’s “virgin” to the present one. Eustache observes the exacting selection process, the fostering of communal bonds, and a bold implication by Pessac’s presiding priest that the ritual upholds the same Christian values for which leftist students and workers were then currently fighting.Read More »