[In Ma Nuit chez Maud] Rohmer presents Jean-Louis and Françoise quite straight forwardly as people for whom principles are genuinely important and adultery and infidelity really matter. The film is all of a piece: characters, setting, and camera style constantly reinforce and interact with each other, yet within this apparent uniformity Rohmer creates effects of great subtlety and depth. Despite the fact that the film centers round the long conversation in Maud's apartment, filmed largely in long-held, almost static shots, and that this scene is paralleled, though more briefly, by the later dialogue in Françoise's room, it never loses visual interest. Rohmer controls the rhythm of the film perfectly, making the editing reflect all the facets of the debate—the flashes of intensity, the struggle for self-expression, the lapses into misunderstanding or confusion, the moments of slackness and tiredness. As the conversation develops we begin to see the characters from a variety of perspectives…. Rohmer shows great sensitivity to the ways in which behavior and even personality can shift according to situation or circumstance…. [Each] situation allows or forces a different facet to reveal itself. And behind each individual episode is the mingled austerity and joyfulness of the season, handled in such a way that the bleakness of the winter appears as a conditioning factor in the relationships. (pp. 57-8)

The structure of the film appears clear-cut, the images distinguish sharply between black and white, the rhythm is assured and self-confident, the settings are pared down so that they reinforce the argument rather than suggesting alternatives or variations of it. Yet within this framework people reveal themselves to be confused and hesitant, projects never work out in quite the way they were intended to, motives are mixed and muddled, and every act, however decisive and apparently self-sufficient, has its shadow. And over and above this is a final layer, in which the enclosures and limitations have their truth after all. The film moves through a series of clearly defined spaces—rooms, cars, streets, a church—within which each person has carved out his own personal space and within which the camera generally isolates him. In church the priest is rarely seen in relationship to his listeners: he is caught mainly in close-up, speaking into a void, while Jean-Louis and Françoise listen, each alone on the screen or focused sharply against a blurred group of fellow-worshippers. The same procedure holds true for the other scenes: Rohmer cuts between characters but seldom joins them. Jean-Louis's world is like that formed by the narrow streets of Clermont-Ferrand: ostensibly two-way, they allow effectively for movement in only one direction; to permit movement the other way, you have to abandon your own claims and pull aside. Two-way traffic is impossible, and this perhaps helps to account for the fact that one of the strongest impressions left by the ending of the film is a sense of lost opportunities. (p. 59)