There is something sublime about this film; whether it is the perspective, the idea behind the story (from an article about married women living in the new flat buildings of Paris suburbs taking on part-time prostitution) or the often sublime sequencing of events, there is a continuity of thought at work behind it, the continuity of the artist (as film maker, painter, philosopher) at work. The film has elements of meditation, social comment, and faith which seeks not just to analyse or explain what is is to live in this modern world (since, as Godard observed, living in Paris inevitably involves some form of prostitution) - but to put meaning back into it again, to raise ideas and thought about observing this life, to speculate. So the ideas about a superficial love of products (cars, washing powder, magazine) may seem a little dated and old-school post-modernist for us, but how many directors tackle the questions so openly, artistically and honestly, on a multitude of levels all at once? The film is about Godard's eye and mind of course, secretly feeding dialogue directly to his actress with microfone and earpiece (fulfilling Renoir?), as well as fulfilling a cinematic history of boys filming girls. The coffee cup analogy of consciousness emerging, the car wash scene, the tripartite openness of the film, the perspicacity... there is too much to say about this film. If only there were novelists or writers around who could do the same, with such beauty.
rino breebaart
rino breebaart