Dir: Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France, 2010, 102 mins
Cast: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Patti Smith
Review by Dave Hall
Godard’s latest (rumoured to be his last) is so resolutely opaque and uncommercial it’s tempting to think of it as a two finger salute to the movie business and what Godard sees as the decline in cultural life generally rather than a friendly wave goodbye. It’s fragmentary and wilfully exclusive with some spectacularly ugly images and teeth-grindingly discordant sound design, yet manages to be utterly compelling throughout. Typical Godard, you might say.
The first forty minutes or so take place on a cruise liner; we witness beautifully still shots of people and places, mixed with snatches of philosophical conversation in numerous languages between a mix of passengers; different genders, sexes and races. These people seem to be at once thrown together but united only by difference, and the whole thing is apparently a metaphor for the EU. Interspersed with this are apparently unstaged scenes of everyday life on the cruise – nightclub, casino, restaurant, all presented as a hellish, madly homogenised and occasionally dayglo world
Suddenly and for the next forty minutes, we find ourselves in family-run gas station in rural France. The mother of the family (Tanvier) is running for elected office, but when a TV crew arrives to interview her, she (and her children) gives them short shrift, seemingly disinterested in engaging with these frenetic and slightly clownish media people. Oh, and there’s a llama in this segment as well.
The film ends with a montage of still images from the ports visited in the first segment: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona. All are past or current trouble spots, now drifted through as places of leisure.
Godard is not about to dumb down or make life easier for the audience now he’s reached his 80th year (and his 95th film). The main language of the film is French but the English subtitles are arranged into a succession of three word haikus (two words are often concatenated into one to fit the form), which sometimes summarise, sometimes comment on the voices we hear. Shakespeare and Balzac are referenced, and – wait, is that Patti Smith, strumming and singing in a cruise liner’s lift lobby!
Intellectualism, philosophy, socialism may be out of vogue in the wider world, but not here; to make the point, Godard arranged for philosopher Alain Badiou to give a lecture for real on the cruise ship: nobody came. The spending and losing of money went on unabated. It may be the fate that Godard fears for all philosophers and intellectuals (himself included), but if he’s angry, he’s not ranting. There are wonderfully subtle scenes here in fact; a little boy watches footage of a classical concert but, fearing censure, surreptitiously waves an invisible baton and blows into his soft drink in time to a wind instrument.
What’s it all about? This is a film that probably requires repeated viewings, and even then may prove just as mystifying and perverse as it does first time round. Of course, this being Godard, that’s job done.
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