The Prince Charles Cinema

<
ShowingMonday 22nd June
>
The Mother and the Whore
1973 215mins France (15) Psychological Drama

After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May '68 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache's own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with a startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

All About Lily Chou-Chou
2001 146mins Japan (15) Crime / Thriller

For kids around the world, music is often the only salvation when the pain and anxiety of teenage life becomes too much to bear. Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) is in the 8th grade and he worships Lily Chou-Chou, a Bjork-like chanteuse whose epic music is lush and transcendent. Yuichi only lives for Lily Chou-Chou's big Tokyo concert, where the lies and violence can be washed away by the presence of his goddess and her powerful music. But fate has yet another obstacle in store for Lily's devoted fan.