Do you ever want to feel artistically superior to all of your friends? Maybe you are tired of your friends talking about how great the latest action film is and want to sound better. Maybe you want to impress your date with obscure film trivia. Maybe you think that knowing a lot about film history and art will somehow validate your meaningless existence and will replace that ever-growing pit in your heart that tells you that you don’t matter and no one cares about you. Well, don’t worry! Because I watch a bunch of art house films and can give you recommendations on what to watch and what to feel superior about! So without any delay, let’s get pretentious!
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Aight, so I have a lot of opinions on Jean-Luc Godard. I’m going to try to keep those to myself as I will inevitably get sidetracked into talking about that for too long. But I might dip into that naturally as this is essentially a biopic on Jean-Luc Godard.
Godard Mon Amour, also known as Le Redoutable in some countries, is a new film from French director Michel Hazanavicius. If that name sounds familiar and you don’t know why Hazanavicius won best director and best picture for The Artist a few years back. Godard Mon Amour tells the love story between legendary and influential filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard and actress Anne Wiazemsky. I honestly think this film is fairly well-intentioned and is fairly inoffensive. So before we get into the shortcomings of the film, let’s talk about what I thought was good.
I would say the film in all aspects is fine. Nothing really stood out to me as fantastic or absolutely amazing or anything like that. Everything is passable, from the script to the set design to the acting. I will say that the two leads to a fine job. Again, nothing huge or noteworthy but good enough to not get too tired of them. Louis Garrel, who usually is a pretty boy in what I’m familiar with him, plays the gross looking Godard pretty well. The audience I’m fairly certain is not supposed to like him, and he plays a not well-liked person well. I was more interested in Stacy Martin’s performance as Anne Wiazemsky a bit more though. I can’t place my finger on it, but I thought Martin’s performance was just a tad bit more drawing. She has a better stage presence and knows how to fill a shot well. Again, nothing great. She certainly won’t make anyone’s best of the year list. But she does a fine job.
I will also say that the editing of the film is interesting but primarily because it mimics that of Godard’s filmography. This is where the film starts to get a little tricky. The film’s intentions are clearly not in favor of Godard. In fact, you could say the film acts as one big “go screw yourself” toward Godard. I mean given how much Godard screwed with Cannes throughout the years, then to premiere this film at Cannes… It’s a bold move. What’s kind of interesting but in a way a downfall is that the films selected audience are people who have seen Godard’s films and don’t like them.
You need to have a pretty vast knowledge of Godard’s style and filmography to fully understand and appreciate this film. But at the same time though, the film doesn’t want you to particularly like Godard either or his styling. So in order to fully appreciate this film, you have to watch Godard’s films, not like them, then continue to watch at least half of his filmography. So you have to be me. And even I didn’t really like it all that much.
The film tried to add more stylings into its base to make a fairly simple romance biopic into something more. And I give it credit for at least trying that. Unfortunately, the style doesn’t match the substance. The film has both, which can be a great thing. But watching this film is like biting into an apple and tasting an orange. Both are good, but they don’t particularly complement each other very well.