Luc Moullet: Hardly Working -- a retrospective
Our first-ever retrospective is a salute to France’s consummate working-class independent filmmaker and film critic—8 screenings of new feature restorations and short films.
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Sep 09, 2025, 7:00 PM – Sep 29, 2025, 7:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives + Brain Dead Studios
LUC MOULLET: HARDLY WORKING
A Mezzanine retrospective
8 screenings including brand-new 4K restorations courtesy of Cinema Guild!
Sept 9th - 28th
2220 Arts + Archives + Brain Dead Studios
Our first-ever retrospective is a salute to France’s consummate working-class independent filmmaker and film critic, whose many odes to the value of amateurism—in life, work, industry and relationships—comprises an oeuvre of brilliance. On the eve of his 88th birthday, we are thrilled to present the majority of his features and short films, across two venues throughout the month of September.
The last living member of the French New Wave, Luc Moullet began as a critic at Cahiers du cinéma (the first to champion B-movie masters Samuel Fuller and Edgar Ulmer) before embarking on a prodigiously active filmmaking career in irreverent fictions, reflexive documentaries and the in-between, where Moullet himself often appears on screen. At once earnest and sardonic, Moullet’s films (nearly all of them self-produced) play like driest of black comedies, chronicling the absurdities of life under capitalism with a sober glance. A master of nonfiction and satire who prefers the vantage point of the pedestrian on the street, Moullet’s shoestring cinema has an obvious through-line to modern filmmakers like John Wilson and Patrick Keiller, and remains one of cinema’s finest chroniclers of urban and industrial spaces – despite the vast majority of his films remaining undistributed in the U.S. until now.
While many of these restorations premiered in L.A. at the UCLA Film & Television Archive earlier this year, we have endeavored to revive this series in tandem with Film at Lincoln Center’s retrospective, and provide another chance for L.A. audiences to enjoy and appreciate Moullet’s work.
We are especially thankful to Ed McCarry (Cinema Guild), Dan Sullivan (Film at Lincoln Center), Becca Rieckmann, Pauline Kraatz, Bobby Sheppard, Will Sloan, Beatrice Loayza, Gal Amiram, Alex Gootter and Gael Teicher (La Traverse) for their help with this series.
“You will never find craggier, funnier, more brilliantly lo-fi and completely idiosyncratic comedies.” -MUBI Notebook
“Outside of George and Mike Kuchar in the United States, I am hard-pressed to name another filmmaker whose career has so fully embodied a lifelong dedication to the values of amateurism as Moullet’s has.” -Nick Pinkerton, Reverse Shot
“Moullet was the only rural, proletarian, and anarchist member of the New Wave…. He maintains a healthy contempt for all the pretensions that money and prestige can buy and burrows into his subjects like an unruly gopher. His movies are sweet, funny, distressing, and strangely noble–a powerful antidote to the self-important romantic psychodramas of Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
“For Moullet, who once wrote that ‘the filmmaker criticizes, and the critic praises,’ [his] ingenious hybrid films act as their own kind of criticism, effortlessly embodying the director’s longstanding concerns for the economic and bureaucratic nuances of a socially engaged film practice.” -Jordan Cronk
All restorations have been produced by La Traverse, with the assistance of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Restorations carried out by Cosmodigital and L.E. Diapason and distributed in North America by Cinema Guild.
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Anatomy of a Relationship (Anatomie d’un rapport)
directed by Luc Moullet & Antonietta Pizzorno
1976, France, 82m, DCP
Brand new 4K restoration!
Tuesday, September 9
2220 Arts + Archives
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
doors/bar 7:30
film 8:00
In this autofiction masterpiece, Moullet himself (in the first of many appearances in his own films) portrays a boorish filmmaker struggling to get his next film made while unable to sexually satisfy his girlfriend (Christine Hébert), whose intellectual awakening seems to further spell the death knell of their relationship. Frank and dryly hilarious, the film was co-directed by Moullet and his real-life wife and creative partner Antoinetta Pizzorno, and its many cringe-inducing, all-too-recognizable scenarios carry on the tradition of metafictional totems like David Holzman’s Diary and exemplify the cannibalizing labor and frustration of a life lived in independent film. -Micah Gottlieb, Mezzanine
In French with English subtitles. A Cinema Guild release.
“Provides a succinct introduction to [Moullet’s] special brand of low-budget cinema. A restaging of his abortive sexual relationship with Antonietta Pizzorno (who cowrote and codirected but, unlike Moullet, appears only in the finale), it’s painfully, hilariously, and graphically honest, and its willful rejection of technique is an implicit critique of slickness.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Preceded by:
Essai d’ouverture
1988, France, 14m, DCP
Moullet struggles to open a bottle of Coke.
Total runtime: 96m
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Origins of a Meal (Genèse d’un repas)
directed by Luc Moullet
1978, France, 115m, DCP
Brand new 4K restoration!
Thursday, September 11
2220 Arts + Archives
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
doors/bar 7:30
film 8:00
Wherein Moullet turns his typically incisive gaze onto something deceptively simple: his own plate. In this groundbreaking documentary, Moullet deftly traces the process of how workers are exploited and capital is extracted in the process of getting food to our tables. Without overt critique (but with his regular injections of humor and charm), he juxtaposes the sanitized rhetoric of businessmen and managers with the stark realities of workers, and takes the opportunity to implicate both the viewer (and especially himself) in maintaining this system. Origins of a Meal may make your next trip to the grocery store a little more troubling - as it perhaps should be. -Becca Rieckmann, Mezzanine
In French with English subtitles. A Cinema Guild release.
"With Origins of a Meal, an insightful documentary about the globalization of the economy and the metamorphic nature of colonial and imperialist pursuits, Luc Moullet grasps the inadequacy of old models and forms of militant cinema to accommodate the non-binary nature of the current global system, and the necessarily subjective and personal implication of the filmmaker." - Audrey Evrard, Jump Cut
Preceded by:
More and More (Toujours plus)
1994, France, 24m, DCP
Moullet examines what just may be the cathedral of high-consumerism and, by extension, capitalist society: the modern supermarket. -Film at Lincoln Center
Total runtime: 139m
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Brigitte and Brigitte (Brigitte et Brigitte)
directed by Luc Moullet
1966, France, 76m, DCP
Brand-new 4K restoration!
Saturday, September 13
Brain Dead Studios
611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
doors: 2:30pm
film: 3pm
“Luc Moullet’s shaggy-dog debut [feature] —hailed by Jean-Luc Godard as ‘revolutionary’—is an exemplary work of the Nouvelle Vague at the crest of its influence and renown. Two girls with the same name (Françoise Vatel and Colette Descombes) become roommates after separately arriving in Paris to attend university, and although they hail from different regions in France, the fads and trends of their day have shaped them similarly. An episodic delight suffused with strong early indications of Moullet’s wit, charm, and sense of the place of the absurd within the everyday, Brigitte et Brigitte also features memorable performances from Moullet’s New Wave cohort Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, and a young André Téchiné, and as well as the legendary Samuel Fuller, himself a crucial inspiration for the Cahiers du cinéma contingent.” -Film at Lincoln Center
Followed by:
The Smugglers (Les contrebandières)
1967, France, 80m, DCP
“A truly singular object that is both a loving spoof of Hollywood-style action thrillers and a sociological send-up of the burgeoning student movement, The Smugglers follows two women (Françoise Vatel and Monique Thiriet) who work on the French side of the border in the Southern Alps running goods (and people). When the two women discover that they’re both romantically involved with the same man, a delirious threeway chase ensues that will find our heroines (and their two-timing third) running afoul of state officials and underworld figures alike. Also notable for inaugurating Luc Moullet’s career-spanning interest in landscape, not so much as background but rather as still another character in the farce we call ‘life’.” -Film at Lincoln Center
Total runtime: 155m
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A Girl is a Gun (Une aventure de Billy le Kid)
directed by Luc Moullet
1971, France, 79m, DCP
Brand new 4K restoration!
Sunday, September 14
Brain Dead Studios
611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
doors: 4pm
film: 4:30pm
Luc Moullet’s energizing third feature (his first to be released internationally) is a gonzo New Wave Western pastiche that inscribes itself in a long lineage of French auteurs exploring and subverting American culture. The film cleverly hijacks a classic Western plot – the vengeful chase of an uncivilized thief (Jean-Pierre Léaud) by bounty hunters and otherworldly men – and inserts a woman (Rachel Kest) in the equation, whose presence upends all of our narrative and ultimately social expectations. Somewhat more philosophical, romantic and defiant than its Italian counterpart, the Spaghetti Western, Moullet’s film is invigorated both by Jean Eustache’s tight editing and a hallucinatory and often offbeat soundtrack by Moullet’s brother Patrice, and is a balancing act of dissonance and conformity – the latter made possible by Moullet’s decision to shoot in the so-called “Provençal Colorado” in Luberon, France, an area almost indiscernible from the legendary far-west American topography, which had rarely if ever been used in French films. -Pauline Kraatz, Mezzanine
“Like a Hollywood B western directed by a French outsider artist, Luc Moullet’s psychotropic oater stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Billy the Kid in a wild comic performance that’s equal parts Clint Eastwood and Three Stooges.” -Film at Lincoln Center
“The vistas are so breathtaking and the colors so gorgeous they make his meager budget irrelevant.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum
“A comedy of camera mismanagement…. Only with closer scrutiny does it become apparent that Moullet’s seemingly slapdash approach conceals a sort of precision … It’s a masterpiece, only turned inside out.” -Nick Pinkerton, Reverse Shot
Preceded by:
Overdone Steak (Un steak trop cuit)
1960, France, 19m, DCP
In Moullet’s directorial debut, two siblings argue about—what else—what’s for dinner. -Film at Lincoln Center
Total runtime: 98m
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The Comedy of Work (La comédie du travail)
directed by Luc Moullet
1987, France, 85m, DCP
Saturday, September 20
Brain Dead Studios
611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
doors: 4pm
film: 4:30pm
In this absurdist comedy set during the rise of systemic unemployment, Moullet tells the story of a job counselor (Sabine Haudepin) who falls in love with an "unemployed professional”, and decides to seduce him by offering him a managerial position—at the the expense of an overly-qualified and career-obsessed man laid-off that same day. No one is spared in this lucid and cruel dance of failed expectations and grotesque ideologies. Moullet (who cameos as a character named Mr. Unemployed) employs a tone of light-hearted derision rather than somber indignation, save for scenes involving marginalized immigrant workers, who do not have the luxury of choosing whether or not to conform to the masquerade that is the labour market. Every frame is so delightfully crafted and offers some respite, despite a subject that teeters on the edge of tragic. -Pauline Kraatz, Mezzanine
“A dryly comic investigation into the contradictions and indignities of modern labor, and might be Moullet’s most incisive work.” -Film at Lincoln Center
Preceded by:
Barres
1984, France, 14m
In this endlessly inventive short, Moullet portrays all the ways one can get onto the Paris Metro without paying.
Total runtime: 100m
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The Seats of the Alcazar (Les sièges de l’Alcazar)
directed by Luc Moullet
1989, 54m, France, DCP
Sunday, September 21
2220 Arts + Archives
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
doors: 2:30pm
film: 3pm
Among the most moving and delightful films ever made about the love of movies, Moullet’s satirical look at the culture of Parisian cinephilia is a hilarious lampooning of idiosyncratic viewing habits and obsessions, stemming from his own time-worn observations. The film revolves around a Cahiers du Cinéma film critic who embarks on a mission to write about the Vittorio Cottafavi film retrospective at his local cinema—that is, until he spots Jeanne, a critic from rival film publication Positif, who is planning her own hit-piece on the Italian filmmaker.
“Moullet has always balanced his compulsions with comedy, and Les Sièges de l’Alcazar stands out as one of his finest works of self-parody.” -Le Cinéma Club
“Ranks among the most profound and insightful meditations on movie love in [Moullet’s] eclectic filmography.” -Film at Lincoln Center
Followed by:
Death’s Glamour a.k.a. The Prestige of Death (Le prestige de la mort)
2006, France, 72m, DCP
“Luc Moullet contemplates the twilight of his career—and his own mortality—in this comic pseudo-documentary, a characteristically charming, satirical, and yet intellectually serious inquiry into the struggle against ‘the end.’ The film follows Moullet, playing a magnetic self-caricature, as he endeavors to rejuvenate his career and win over a whole new audience… by faking his own death, swapping his passport with that of a dead body he stumbles upon. An extremely free remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Whispering Chorus (1917), The Prestige of Death ranks among Moullet’s most personal and profound meditations on cinema and filmmaking.” -Film at Lincoln Center
Total runtime: 126m
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THE SHORT FILMS OF LUC MOULLET
Saturday, September 27
2220 Arts + Archives
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
doors/bar: 1:30pm
film: 2:00pm
La Valse des médias
1987, France, 27m
This typically clever work of cinematic sociology examines the modernization of public libraries in France and the rise of the media library. (Film at Lincoln Center)
Le Fantome de Longstaff
1996, France, 20m
This free adaptation of a short story by Henry James follows an ailing American woman who travels to Rome with a friend and encounters what appears to be the ghost of a man she knew years earlier. (Film at Lincoln Center)
Le Ventre de l’Amérique
1996, France, 25m
This signature documentary finds Moullet wishing to experience a United States beyond the usual fixation on New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—and so he travels to Des Moines, Iowa, of all places. (Film at Lincoln Center)
Le Litre de lait
2006, France, 14m
In this foray into autobiography, a teenage boy is tasked with buying some milk from the wife of his mother’s lover. (Film at Lincoln Center)
Less and Less (Toujours moins)
2010, France, 14m
The follow-up to More and More comically probes the sometimes convenient, sometimes baffling automation of modern life. (Film at Lincoln Center)
Total runtime: 100m
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Up and Down (Parpaillon)
directed by Luc Moullet
1993, France, 84m, DCP
Closing night screening, presented with Hollywood Entertainment!
Sunday, September 28
Brain Dead Studios
611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
doors/bar: 4:30pm
film: 5pm
Moullet excels at capturing precise observations of human behavior, and no setting is more ripe for this practice than the bike race at Parpaillon, a remote mountain pass in the French alps. A vast ensemble of riders are revisited throughout the ascent, each offering a unique perspective of why they have taken on this gruelling task. Is it for sport? Tourism? Madness? Here, he has considered every possibility for absurdity, assembling the most revealing and surreal, and more importantly, the silliest. At its heart, Parpaillon delights in the gag for its own sake. -Becca Rieckmann, Mezzanine
In French with English subtitles. A Cinema Guild release.
"There are films which are greater. There are others that are funnier. But there are doubtless few films that (in a minor key) are as innovative, as funny, as intelligent, as true and as free as Parpaillon." -Fabien Boully, Rouge
Preceded by:
L’empire de medor
1986, France, 13m
An absurdist exploration of the exalted position dogs hold in society.
Total runtime: 99m