I don't exactly envy the task the director here, Haznavicius, set himself, since it basically involved constant aping of Godard's essentially inimitable style. Actually, as Godard imitations go, it's OK, though, somewhat inevitably, way dumber than its model. Still, you just can't. Almost the whole point of Godard, as this film acknowledges, is his relentless defiance of convention. To imitate the style of that defeats the purpose even if you do it well. Or worse, it just adds to our own era's deathly, Wes Andersonish embrace of the hollowed-out fake past and hopelessness about doing anything really new and vital now or ever again.
Still it does seem, from reviews here, to have appealed to a few Godard virgins who might, with luck, go on to discover the real thing. And it does make a nice point about a conflict in Godard's character that seems key to the effect of his films: the coexistence of an almost superhuman playfulness and inventiveness with, paradoxically, the most dourly humourless of political outlooks - plus a misanthropy that might have justified itself via the politics, but probably goes tragically deeper. I'm not, by the way, saying any of this to damn leftism in general, which is my own position, so much as the near murderous, proto-Baader-Meinhof strain that late-60s radicalism somehow gave rise to.
In its examination of the then 35-year-old Godard's paranoid romantic jealousy vis a vis teenage wife Anna Wiazemsky (upon whose memoir the script is based) the film likely also sheds light on the sour misogyny that definitely made its way into his work at the worst of times. That said, at least his latent Calvinism or whatever (this is the explanation given here) prevented him from demanding of his actresses that they strip, which is not at all the case in this film. It tries a meta joke about this, which, like a lot of is humour, falls flat.
By the by, and not with nudity in mind, I'm really disappointed the lead here wasn't the star of Blue is the Warmest Colour since she's practically Wiazemsky's twin.
Still it does seem, from reviews here, to have appealed to a few Godard virgins who might, with luck, go on to discover the real thing. And it does make a nice point about a conflict in Godard's character that seems key to the effect of his films: the coexistence of an almost superhuman playfulness and inventiveness with, paradoxically, the most dourly humourless of political outlooks - plus a misanthropy that might have justified itself via the politics, but probably goes tragically deeper. I'm not, by the way, saying any of this to damn leftism in general, which is my own position, so much as the near murderous, proto-Baader-Meinhof strain that late-60s radicalism somehow gave rise to.
In its examination of the then 35-year-old Godard's paranoid romantic jealousy vis a vis teenage wife Anna Wiazemsky (upon whose memoir the script is based) the film likely also sheds light on the sour misogyny that definitely made its way into his work at the worst of times. That said, at least his latent Calvinism or whatever (this is the explanation given here) prevented him from demanding of his actresses that they strip, which is not at all the case in this film. It tries a meta joke about this, which, like a lot of is humour, falls flat.
By the by, and not with nudity in mind, I'm really disappointed the lead here wasn't the star of Blue is the Warmest Colour since she's practically Wiazemsky's twin.