BOURGEOIS morality is certainly not a hot commercial item these days-at least not when it's treated explicitly. For all the miles of moralizing in recent commercial films, I can't recall a single foot attempting to explore the subject of morality itself. And this is, of course, understandable: in an era of ever-accelerating apocalypse conventional religion seems irrelevant, it's simply not of interest (who needs it?), we've heard it all before, etc. Overcoming these formidable cultural barriers, Eric Rohmer has created a work of incredibly exciting proportions about a devout Catholic learning how to live in the banal bourgeois continuum of provincial France.

Far more than a curiosity, however, Ma Nuit Chez Maud achieves its power through an aesthetic structure vastly more engaging than mere portraiture. Its first-person narrative frame forces you to share the experience of Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) through his visual point of view (also brief interior monologues), subtly builds up a tension between your sensibility and your experience of his, and finally forces a dialectical confrontation in sequence after sequence with the ultimately desirable Maud (Francoise Fabian), where his choices directly thwart your inclinations to act through him. Rohmer uses this audience identification with the human reality of the film to force the relevance (though not necessarily the acceptance) of his abstract, moral material.

Ma Nuit Chez Maud exists simultaneously on both of these levels and depends on the tension between them, a kind of inverted love story that's interesting mainly for the reasons the love doesn't come off, which are metaphysical, contradictory, and above all, intellectual. A knowledge of Pascal seems important in sorting out patterns of thought, since the sophisticated conversations ("you're more of a Jansenist than I am") are often elliptical, but don't be put off: with Rohmer, as with his New Wave cohorts, academic expertise is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding his intellectuality. Most of the ideas are hashed over at Maud's in brilliant, circuitous, and convoluted dialogue, which, like most conversation, resists complete synthesis. Certain intellectual polarities emerge, however, between ideology and practice, determinism and free will, which can be described briefly.

Pascal's Wager proposes that the promise of infinite gain makes belief in God's existence worthwhile no matter how small the possibility might seem, and that life should be devoted to renouncing the endless contradictions and passions of self which interfere with maintaining a consciousness of God. Jean-Louis rejects this doctrine, first on the grounds that it's bad probability ("a lottery"), and secondly that accepting certain worldly pleasures (within reason) doesn't lessen his religious faith. He lives by a sort of operational dialectic, using the science of probability to calculate his freedom within the limits of determined facts, and using moral transgressions, i.e., sex (also within limits) to better his sense of judgment ("women always raise my moral standards"), For him a personal cosmology, self-respect ( amour-propre ), and a clear conscience mean everything.

BUT THIS is all too comprehensible: hopelessly incomplete, a summary of a summary. If this were all Rohmer wanted to say he would have put out a circular. Instead, he made a film.

Rohmer achieves a visual purity and a unity of image and material that come close to constituting scientific proof, extending even to the surface flavor of the film: here is an exquisitely controlled work about exquisite control. While Jean-Louis is in the process of formulating his relation to the world, the director places him in a position facing, confronting everything. Point of view shots take on an austere, dialectical frontality, especially in dialogue sequences where Jean-Louis often speaks off-camera to the image on screen. The mere groupings of figures in a landscape have a definite significance in Rohmer's style. Not until after Trintignant's night with Maud, after he has decided to marry Francoise (whom he hasn't met yet), can he be grouped comfortably with others in a frame. Foggy, wintry outdoors scenes, hazy skylines, and claustrophobic interiors convey the hermetically sealed environment within which he must construct his life. Only after considerable resolution, in the last shot of the film, does Rohmer allow you to see clearly the sky and the sea.

A narrow milieu does not only limit, however; it also increases the probability of the chance encounters on which the narrative of Ma Nuit Chez Maud is based. Jean-Louis counts on chance. luck. And his luck is good because he scientifically applies his will to it, as when he picks up his wife-to-be with the full intention of marrying her. Comprehending his possibilities and limitations, he can neither renounce the world and become a saint, nor marry Maud. who is a free-thinker. Either way, to want everything or nothing, you've got to be crazy, fou, and by nature Jean-Louis is serieux -rational, dialectical.

Through confusing academic discourse Rohmer leaves you with a murky residue, what Godard has called "a fabric of contradictions" between consciousness and action. Like See You At Mao, Ma Nuit Chez Mand is about "finding the right line" through the chaos, be it political or moral. Both films, however, resist solutions as well. How complete a human clarity is possible remains always questionable. With all his worrying about how to live, about his personal beliefs and his clear conscience, Jean-Louis fails to make an important human perception about the connection between Maud and Francoise, which his scientific outlook has made predictable and obvious. An imperfect system, perhaps? Human error? The dialectic never ends.