Robinson’s Place

Jean Eustache’s first completed narrative short, a portrait of emotionally immature men on the prowl for female companionship, cemented the template for his subsequent fictions. Aristide Demonico and Daniel Bart play Parisian friends who try to pick up the same young woman (Dominique Jayr). The two men’s competitive barbs and repeated failures in flirtation lead them to band together for petty revenge against their prospective conquest. In the space of forty minutes, Eustache delineates the parameters of his moral universe, in which characters fool themselves into believing that life is completely defined by romantic prowess.