A film that talks the talk

MY NIGHT WITH MAUD/MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD Directed by Eric Rohmer. Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Françoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault, Antoine Vitez Club, IFI, Dublin, Fri Jul 30- Thurs Aug 5 ifi.ie

Of all the directors who emerged from the French New Wave (now, mon Dieu, 50 years old), none forged such a lucid, disciplined, distinctive aesthetic as did the great Eric Rohmer.

The director, who died this year at the age of 89, perfected a class of sophisticated, chatty non-drama – not quite comedy, either – that proved influential on such sedate successors as Richard Linklater and Jim Jarmusch. If the informed viewer catches just 10 seconds of a Rohmer film from the late 1960s or early 1970s he will immediately recognise the signature shapes and tropes.

Part of a series cheekily named Moral Tales, My Night With Maud(1969) marked the point at which Rohmer went from cult hero to arthouse superstar (there once were such things). Following Jean-Louis Trintignant's uncertain Catholic as, on the eve of his marriage, he spends the night talking to a free-thinking divorcee, the film manages to get across many volumes of philosophical conundrums in one reasonably neat package.

View My Night with Maudfor Néstor Almendros's crisp monochrome photography. View it for its accidental cool. View it as the quintessential Rohmer picture.