La maman et la putain is a film about la parole without any action. Eustache’s brutally honest dissection of post-May ’68 fatigue, when the promises of ’68 turned out to be shattered illusions – failed and meaningless – is also a critique of le couple libre, of the affective and sexual morals of sexual liberation. Love is not free and happy, concludes Eustache. Love is pain. Love is devastating, but it is perhaps also the only salvation. “Comes love, nothing can be done.”