La Gueule ouverte
| The Mouth Agape | |
|---|---|
French film poster
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| Directed by | Maurice Pialat |
| Written by | Maurice Pialat |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Néstor Almendros |
| Edited by | Arlette Langmann |
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Release date
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1974 |
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Running time
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82 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
The Mouth Agape (French: La gueule ouverte) is a 1974 French drama film directed by Maurice Pialat. It depicts, in a cinematic realist fashion, a woman going through a terminal illness and also dealing with the tumorous lives of her husband and son. It was one of the least commercially successful of Pialat's films. It was the third film of the ten that he directed before his death in January 2003. It is also known under the titles The Gaping Mouth and The Gaping Maw.
The film stars Monique Mélinand, Philippe Léotard, Hubert Deschamps, and Nathalie Baye in the main roles. Néstor Almendros, the Spanish cinematographer known for working with the Nouvelle Vague directors François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer, collaborated with Pialat for the first time on The Mouth Agape. The title is a poetic reference to the open mouth position sometimes found in corpses.
Monique Mélinand portrays a woman in the late stages of terminal illness. Her son Philippe (Philippe Léotard), Philippe's wife Nathalie (Nathalie Baye), and her husband Roger (Hubert Deschamps) attempt to comfort her as she navigates through her ordeal. However, those two closest men in her personal life begin to get more involved in their relationships with multiple mistresses. Her husband flirts with customers in their clothing and haberdashery store while her son flirts with her nurses. The film incorporates elements of Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte to poetic effect, relating to these scenes. In the end scenes, she goes through several final, deeply emotional moments as the disease claims her life.
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