Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya.
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya.
In a Nutshell: An idealistic youth chases an up-and-coming pop singer.
In its own way, Masculin, feminine plays a similar function in Godard’s oeuvre as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Retaining just enough objectivity, both films portray the social and political maelstroms of their times. They stoke the wistful fantasies of its first audience, while leaving insight for its detached viewers. Though Godard’s commentaries are hardly straightforward; here on the culture born of French New Wave. “La Nouvelle Vague” famously birthed Truffaut’s 400 Blows where Jean-Pierre Léaud’s troubled youth insolated himself within the movies and Godard’s Breathless where Jean-Paul Belmondo’s criminal aped Humphrey Bogart. Now, we have Léaud as Paul, another film-lover who occasionally impersonates Belmondo impersonating Bogart. In between political discussions and small revolutions, Paul pursues Madeleine (Chantal Goya), a yé-yé singer groomed for the teenybopper crowd.
In its own way, Masculin, feminine plays a similar function in Godard’s oeuvre as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Retaining just enough objectivity, both films portray the social and political maelstroms of their times. They stoke the wistful fantasies of its first audience, while leaving insight for its detached viewers. Though Godard’s commentaries are hardly straightforward; here on the culture born of French New Wave. “La Nouvelle Vague” famously birthed Truffaut’s 400 Blows where Jean-Pierre Léaud’s troubled youth insolated himself within the movies and Godard’s Breathless where Jean-Paul Belmondo’s criminal aped Humphrey Bogart. Now, we have Léaud as Paul, another film-lover who occasionally impersonates Belmondo impersonating Bogart. In between political discussions and small revolutions, Paul pursues Madeleine (Chantal Goya), a yé-yé singer groomed for the teenybopper crowd.
Paul and Madeleine are a curious pairing; he a child of Marx, she of Coca-Cola. The two size each other up, feigning indifference to a love they cannot define. The battle of the sexes is compounded by three more, though Godard does not push the quintet towards allegory. Even outside of the bedroom, Paul lives a life that is both movie fiction and that fiction’s reflection; hedonistic in a chaotic world. Non-sequiturs buzz about the frame’s edge, punctuated by empty gunshots. Filmed as cinéma vérité, its collection of scenes and interviews feel improvised. The film breathes; its observations about war, love, film and the like do not feel like statements, but experiences. Godard holds the immediacy to youthful introspection even when names and events have dated. Godard displays intrigue for this generation of restless, yearning narcissism. In between snatches of essayist musings, Masculin, feminine hints at a more loving ode for its characters and their cinema-seeped lives. How else could Godard regard his own children?
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