A WOMAN LIKE EVE (1979) Blu-ray
Director: Nouchka van Brakel
Cult Epics

A married woman finds love and independence with all its consequences in A WOMAN LIKE EVE, on Blu-ray from Cult Epics.

When housewife Eva (Monique van de Ven, AMSTERDAMNED) inexplicably burst into tears during her Mother's Day celebration, her confused husband Ad (Peter Faber, MYSTERIES) hopes that sun and sea will fix what ails her and sends her off (or "away") to the South of France with best friend Sonja (Marijke Merckens). While divorcee Sonja is falling in love right and left, Eva makes the acquaintance of folk singer Liliane (Maria Schneider, LAST TANGO IN PARIS) and spends much of her holiday at an all-female commune. Eva is disturbed when Sonja jokes about her infatuation with lesbian Liliane; however, upon returning to Holland, she starts learning French and tries to organize a commune with the other housewives. When Liliane comes to Holland to participate in a women's festival, Ad starts to feel neglected as Eva spends nights out with Liliane and her friends, among them local shop owner Sigrid (THE FOURTH MAN's Renée Soutendijk). Ad is at first relieved when Eva confesses that she is falling in love with Liliane, noting its fashionability (and the sociocultural interpretation of such attractions as a step towards independence), but he becomes jealous when Eva consummates the relationship with Liliane. After a blow up at their son's birthday party, Eva walks out on Ad and spends the summer with Liliane back at the commune. She is happy for a time but misses her children – of whom Liliane is not enamored – but her attempts upon returning home to reconcile her new relationship with her old one turns bitter quickly.

Although lesbianism was not at all a novel element in European films of the period, the Netherlands was still reeling from its relatively late exposure to the Sexual Revolution and the not yet ten-year-old "Dutch Sex Wave" kicked off by the works of filmmakers Pim de la Parra (FRANK AND EVA) and Wim Verstappen (BLUE MOVIE) along with Paul Verhoeven's TURKISH DELIGHT (which also starred van de Ven). While not quite as teaming with nudity and naughtiness as those films, A WOMAN LIKE EVE is similarly concerned with social change at the individual and family levels. Director Nouchka van Brakel – whose first feature THE DEBUT dealt a relationship between a teenager girl and an older man – does not present the heterosexual family as overtly oppressive in spite of the insistence of Eva's mother (Truus Dekker, SOLDIER OF ORANGE) that the wife/mother in responsible for maintaining the routines of the family. Ad is not an ogre, instead going from oblivious and confused to jealous and angry, and she refuses to place the greater blame for the effect of the breakup on the children on either husband or wife in spite of his anger and her "abandonment" of them; indeed, Eva seems either not to have felt the same oppression that Sigrid did in her attempts at heterosexual relationships or not to have occurred to her as such. While both van de Ven and Schneider seem a bit awkward communicating in English (the only language they share), Schneider's woodenness could be charitably interpreted as a degree of indifference that Eva might see as being enviably unfettered. The ambiguous ending suggests that Eva in her new relatively freedom may not be so quick to run back into a new relationship that is not without its own unresolved issues.

Little seen stateside apart from screenings at gay film festivals of the period, A WOMAN LIKE EVE comes to Blu-ray from Cult Epics in a new HD transfer from a 35mm print owned by the EYE Filmmuseum (the negative is presumably lost). The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen image is imperfect but that seems to be a combination of the original cinematography and the increased contrast of the print with the French seaside scenes looking a bit bleached (not unusual stylistically for a seventies film) while the low light night interiors can look flat in the dark areas of the frame. It is imperfect but watchable in the manner of some of the other Eye Filmmusem HD masters. The original mono track is available in both lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and LPCM 2.0 with the mix of Dutch, French, and English dialogue, largely naturalistic sound design, and the scoring of Laurens van Rooyen sounding similarly clean. Optional English subtitles are provided for the Dutch and French dialogue.

The disc's major extra is a 2010 Eye Filmmuseum post-screening interview with director van Brakel by journalist Floortje Smit (39:00) in which she recalls writer Carel Donck (MY NIGHTS WITH SUSAN, SANDRA, OLGA & JULIE) calling her up with the idea after hearing the news story about a woman who lost custody of her children after falling in love with another woman, the producer casting van de Ven without consulting her – and the media and the public becoming involved when a story circulated prematurely about van de Ven being fired from the production – and how Schneider's difficult reputation meant that the film's sex scenes were not as sensual as the director would have liked. In discussing the film's reception, she notes that she met a lot of women (and gay men) who were motivated to come out by the film, but also recalls not liking the reaction to the film during a U.S. screening because the viewers hissed whenever Faber was onscreen and that she could have sketched his character with more nuance. In addition to a poster and photo gallery (3:57) and the film's theatrical trailer (2:52), the disc also includes trailers for van Brakel's THE DEBUT and THE COOL LAKES OF DEATH – which looks to be a visually-striking period piece – and Pim de la Parra's FRANK & EVA. (Eric Cotenas)

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