One of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales (the third film in the series), My Night with Maud (Ma nuit chez Maud) has remained one of Rohmer's best known films. Premiering at Cannes in 1969, and (highly unusually) nominated for Oscars in two consecutive years (1970 for Best Foreign Film and 1971 for Best Original Screenplay), it can be viewed almost as a textbook example of classic 20th century French film: a low-key, monochrome, dialogue-heavy examination of male/female relationships. Made shortly after the upheavals of Paris in '68, the film offers a thoughtful (and somewhat sobering) "morning after the night before" perspective, when the dust of revolution had settled. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an introverted and religious 30-something engineer, newly transferred to a smallish town, where an old university friend (Antoine Vitez) -- now a Marxist professor of Philosophy -- introduces him to the titular Maud (Francoise Fabian). A beautiful, witty and "free-spirited" divorcee, she completes the trio representing the contemporary French preoccupations of conservatism, ideology and sex. And so begins a lengthy night of philosophical discussion, political debate and moral grappling -- concluding with a jump-forward-five-years twist to the tale. This is classic intellectual cinema, and as French as escargot, black polo necks and Pernod.

NB: My Night With Maud screens at the BFI Southbank till 19/08.