bob998

As a French film enthusiast who was around for the first run of Vivre sa Vie and Pierrot le fou, I enjoyed this memoir of Godard's career. He wasn't the greatest director by far--men like Renoir, Clair, Carne and a few others have a claim to that title--but his films were so provoking, in both the good and bad senses that they stick in our minds. Who can forget Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc as they make their way through a disaster-ridden countryside in Weekend, or Belmondo wrapping sticks of dynamite around his head in Pierrot le fou, or again Macha Meril as a human billboard for lingerie in Une femme mariee. Nobody created more gripping images in those days.

I have a collection of comfort movies that I like to watch at night when I don't have to think about anything. Two by Godard (Alphaville and Prenom: Carmen), the Big Lebowski, Va Savoir and a few more. They are non-linear, plot isn't important. I just savour the performances and the comedy. Inherent Vice is one of these, and it's almost perfect. I could do without Joanna Newsom's voice over narration, although she's good to watch, and Owen Wilson's character is really tiresome (he seems to stray in from a Woody Allen picture). But these are small defects in a very entertaining movie.

This doc turned up on TV the other night. It's a look at the formation of the French version of the American Act-Up movement. Like its American counterpart, it tried--with varying success--to shame politicians and church leaders into first acknowledging the problem then doing something about it. There's a sour scene denouncing the Benetton ad, with the grieving family around the bedside of a dying patient. The imagination of the activists is shown by the covering of the obelisk in Marseille by a massive cloth condom--quite funny really. Young people today who haven't heard about the struggles of yesteryear would benefit from watching this.