A Dirty Story

Deceptively simple in form and content, Jean Eustache’s A DIRTY STORY is a fascinatingly complex investigation of the relationship between fiction and documentary, verbal and visual storytelling, and personal and universal desires. The film’s two sections mirror each other: in the first, Michael Lonsdale performs the role of a man explaining to a roomful of friends his past voyeuristic obsessions, while the second section shows an unscripted recording of Jean-Noël Picq, the man Lonsdale plays, recounting the same real-life tale. Eustache presents dramatic and authentic versions of the “dirty story” without authorial commentary and thus encourages the viewer to untangle a web of structural correspondences between the narrations, as well as the sexual and moral implications of Picq’s candid confession.