Nouvelle vague

Most people will not like this film. It's difficult to understand what's going on in the narrative. This isn't uncommon in Godard's work, but it's especially true of his later work. I've seen, besides New Wave, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, and his segment from the omnibus opera film Aria. That segment is actually one of his best works as well. Sticking with the two other features, they are both interesting and beautiful but very slow films. New Wave seems a lot like them at first, especially in its confusing narrative (I had to read a synopsis on it to find out exactly what the plot was). It shares their beauty, but its even more pronounced. If I were advising someone on this film, I would tell them to disregard the narrative completely. Just watch it for its pictorial beauty. And its sound. Godard's experiments in sound have always been one of the most prominent traits of his cinema. It goes back at least to Une femme est une femme, way back in '62. This film contains the most interesting experiments in sound. The music is absolutely beautiful, and, like many of his other films, it stops abruptly, pops back up when you're not expecting it, and shifts volumes randomly. The sound effects are also quite beautiful. While New Wave was perhaps dull in its narrative (it's an examination of capitalism and consumerism), who cares? This is film. Film is a visual medium, and this is a visual masterpiece. Remember: RES, NON VERBA ("things, not words," an intertitle that appears frequently in the film). Oh, and Alain Delon, star of such great films as Rocco and His Brothers, stars. He's still a major stud! 9/10.

Not one of my favorite Godard films - this 1990 entry, Novelle vague (New Wave, so to speak). While there were things about the film that left me un-fulfilled after repeat viewings, I probably can't recommend the film to someone who might, by the luck of the invisible film-geek Gods, find the tape in the video-store and only will watch it once. By the time I had my third viewing of this (the first two times I just couldn't get through to the end, maybe too tired, maybe just not in the mood for so much Godard going on), I respected it a little more than on my first viewing, though that's giving it some more credit than it should. Bottom line, folks, this is a hard-core, un-abashed art-film, where symbolism is turned up to eleven on the intellectual amp, images are put forth that do hold interest (and when I say that I mean sporadically) in the poetic, love nature over the man-made structure sense, and of course Alain Delon and Domiziana Giordano as the lead couple. Although Giordano is given some emotions to work with (and her start to the film, in which she accidentally runs over a hitchhiker on the road, should kick off something more interesting than it does), Delon mostly walks around with the same face, looking dour and un-happy until midway through the film, which I won't spoil. To put it another way, it makes his performance as the ultra low-key killer in Le Samourai look like Robert De Niro in Goodfellas.

To say that the film has no coherent plot is a give-away. If you're looking for the kinds of stories that kept Godard's new-wave films of the 60's, which were interspersed here and there with the philosophy and poetry he over-loads here, may be disappointed. In fact, the film almost achieves an ironic success in making the film far from the real purpose of the new-wave to start with. Godard gives us characters in this film, but some are left on the screen so briefly it's hard to comprehend what they're talking about. Some of the stuff on the corporations are interesting, as well are a few pivotal scenes to what story there is, but then it's gets downplayed by the mainly pretentious attitude. Maybe my biggest problem with the film is that Godard seems to be backing a viewer, not just myself but any particular viewer who'd seek this film out, into a corner- a part of me feels guilty for thinking a lot of the film just wasn't good because there was some good to it. The editing by Godard himself had a rhythm to it I kinda dug, the cinematography kept the colors vivid, and the choices in music were the typical, free-fancy Godard we know from the 60's.

But in all, and perhaps I can't put my finger on it, Novelle vague is just not my cup of tea. Maybe someday some hip, cool movie professor will give me another perspective on what I'm missing.

Vague is the important word here. It's a shame that Godard spoils the memory of a truly remarkable genre of films in using the title, New Wave, for this disappointing effort from 1990. Vague is screen legend, Alain Delon's expression throughout the film; vague is the message which Godard fails to communicate; vague is the attempt which the auteur makes to be innovative and relevant, so many years after his genius first sparked revolution in the seventh art.

Down to the nitty-gritty: Godard attempts a film whose dialogue is based on a mixture of abrasive, noisy hyper-realism, and sombre, philosophic truisms. In this sense he achieves some grade of success. The film skips on at it's own idiosyncratic pace, jerking one way, and then another, through the landscape of late-Twentieth-Century, European capitalism and empty, absurd avarice. Some of these jagged, philosophical bursts of conversation are successfully framed by the mechanical and natural surrounds in a manner unique to Godard. He disdains obvious narrative constructs in favour of a more jarring technique, throwing together literary and cinematic quotations to raise questions which seem never to be answered. However, many of the ideas presented appear overly contrived and incoherent, almost as if he has given up attempting to resolve any of the larger philosophical issues, and instead satisfies himself with an indulgent, dignified surrender to the inevitable.

Domiziana Giordano's performance, as the ponderous, Italian heiress Elena Torlato-Favrini, is more irritating than poetically captivating, as might have been the director's intention. Her limited emotional range, her unnecessary mix of languages, and Alain Delon's almost bemused reaction leaves a tone of falsity and pretension hanging in the air, and ringing in the viewer's ear. Delon himself seems lost and miscast in his double role of hapless, taciturn, accident victim Roger Lennox, and his self-assured, gregarious twin, Richard. The film's confused, and ultimately superfluous plot, restricts his potential to inject any significant improvisation, charisma or depth into either of these crude alter egos. If anything, he is more successful depicting the ambitious, devil-may-care doppelganger than portraying the silent, submissive apprentice, reluctantly introduced into the shallow world of Godard's European upper classes.

Visually, of course, Nouvelle Vague has many of the marks of the great French filmmaker. He paints, with the excellent collaboration of cinematographer William Lubtchansky, visions derived from a world comprised of memory and half-understood dreams. Nostalgia is always on the threshold, as Godard revisits the luxuriant, natural environment of his youth, now lit with late evening shadows and golden autumn tones. Also to be welcomed are the touches of humour which offer some relief from the cumbersome, and often clichéd, musings of the various characters. Chief amongst the running jokes is the existential angst, represented by a recurring question pronounced by Raoul Dorfman's (Christophe Odent) beautiful, young, trophy girlfriend (Maria Pitarresi): "What will I do ?" His pragmatic response: "Admire the nature"; "admire the architecture"; "admire the furniture !". Less welcome is the discordant soundtrack, which makes viewing the film a decidedly uncomfortable experience.

It's not possible for me at this point to go through every Godard film, but it's also of no interest. Naturally, I may be missing shades or nuance of his film personality, but what's of interest to me, is to be able to see in these snapshots removed by time how he has evolved or stayed the same, how the old conundrums are expressed in new ways and is there a chronicle here of time gone.

The title here may be in reference to a number of things, what I get from it though, is the transfiguration of New Wave expression. None of the subsequent Godard films I've seen has been any less New Wave than his New Wave films, but what is New Wave now, as opposed to thirty years ago?

It stands out immediately to me that his Michel Poiccards have aged, that Godard has aged with them, mellowed perhaps by a certain failure to become instruments in the shaping of a better world, by a recognition that they're still standing on the same inscrutable dilemmas about love and death and that a wind of change didn't sweep them up or passed them by. Godard approaches politics here, as he did before. This time, the bitter realization of an unjust world is spoken not by romantic fools in the middle of an irreverent crime spree, but corporate people in suits and ties as they strike business deals. This is done without the gloating of triumph, like perhaps the Michel Poiccards and Pierrots grew up to inevitably conform and ruminate.

Alain Delon walks through this with sometimes a look of curious dispassion, sometimes weary astonishment, with a contradiction. As with Prenom Carmen, I see in Godard a willingness to meditate on the nature of things, to let go and be at peace. His characters quip philosophically in constant verbiage, but the film pauses to observe, to record branches of trees or clouds passing over a dark sun. The contradiction, as it were, is rooted for me in a certain kind of acceptance, or the dawning of it. This world may not be better, what these people dreamed in their youth, but it's not so bad either.

One line particularly stands out for me in this acceptance. "There is no higher judge; what isn't resolved by love, stays in suspense". This is one of the most beautiful things I've heard in film, and more, knowing a little of Godard, the contrast amazes me.

Alphaville ends with a similar declaration of the importance of love, but it comes in a point in time for Godard that I feel unconvinced by it, do I take it seriously or is it also part of the joke. Here it's done without irony.

This is important for me not only because it points a way out of the mind, but because it celebrates a meaningful universe even at the absence of a higher decree. If Godard's life and work is narrative, and this is what I'm pursuing in my quest, Nouvelle Vague would make for a soaring finale. But it's not a finale, so things are bound to get even more interesting.

When I was younger, I used to feel jealousy towards people who clicked with stuff like this, but now I think I might pity them.

This film's Godard at his lamest and most frustrating. It's pretty much unwatchable. If I have to give him credit, I guess he could've made Nouvelle Vague longer. An 89-minute runtime might suggest some restraint, but it felt much longer.

Godard's a director whose well-known stuff I watched some time ago and kind of liked, but it only took a couple of deep cuts for me to get the sense his style was generally not for me. This is one I wanted to give a chance, because it's been years since I saw a Godard film and Alain Delon was in it, but I found it more insufferable than anything else by Godard I'd seen before.

Characters speak about nothing, every scene is tedious, everything feels meaningless, and if that's the point somehow I don't care and still don't like it. This just sucks.