This might be the most broadly appealing film I've seen from Huillet/Straub. Bleak, challenging and funny, it's also deeply human in ways that even non-cineasts can relate to. Best known for their extraordinary landscapes, H&S were also masters of the close-up. The last shot of the outraged historian in History Lessons is equaled here by the final image of the mother in this film. Grotesque, ignorant (and leftist) but also deeply vulnerable, the scolding and hypocritical mother might be, in the conventional sense, the greatest character H&S ever brought to screen.