Carmen de Godard

I've seen this once, which isn't really enough, but I found it the most sheerly enjoyable of Godard's later works.

A kaleidescopic updating and deconstruction of the "Carmen" story, it's "Carmen", it's "Last Tango in Paris", it's a girl and a gun, it's the Keystone Kops, it gives us Godard as randy old pervert and it's informed throughout by Beethoven's beautiful late string quartets, which this film made me start listening to. It's also screamingly funny.

I will admit to understanding about a tenth of this and Godard's later work is so personal that it's probably futile to hope that everything will become clear, but I shall see this again as soon as I get the chance. Hal Hartley (and Tarantino) eat your heart out....

First Name: Carmen is an enthralling hybrid for director/actor Jean-Luc Godard and screenwriter (and frequent collaborator) Anne-Marie Mieville. After almost a decade of weird, philosophical experimentation, they took on the opera of Carmen (the original story of which, unfortunately, I am not very knowledgeable of) and deconstructed it with some amusing self-awareness ("Uncle" Jean-Luc Godard at the start of the film is in a hospital of sorts, over-staying his welcome), while going back to Godard's olden days of movies with lovers on the run.

This time the lovers meet by accident and chance- Carmen X (the alluring and dangerous Maruschka Detmers in a controlled, if downtrodden debut acting role) asks of her uncle Jean if she can use his beach-side house to make a film with some friends. He agrees, though not knowing she's apart of a terrorist gang that robs a bank. During the robbery she has a shoot-out, and kiss, with Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffe, whose performance shifts from bizarre to intense and then believable) the security guard. They hide out for a little while, becoming more involved, while Carmen knows at the same time his uncle prepares to make his comeback film after being washed up for so long, her terrorist friends are planning another scheme.

The acting ranges from forceful to observant, from a little boring to a little ridiculous, but like in Godard's 60's films the actors contribute to Godard's documentary style feel (of which he calls a documentary which is 'fictional'). And Godard is able to get a few laughs during his few scenes on camera, even as he spouts a few quotes that make a viewer dig in their minds for a meaning. Accompanied with evocative and sweet late-night shots of cars and a train in Paris, are shots of the ocean, which contributes as the film's main flaw for me (I kept on saying, yeah the sea looks nice, but what's the point he's getting at here- is it the characters or himself that likes staring at the sea?).

Nevertheless, the compositions are no less than on par with what to be expected from Godard (via the great Raoul Coutard and Jean-Bernard Menoud), and the emotionally charged musical selections from Beethoven and Bizet to Tom Waits are pulled off as a successful, often emotional experiment as the footage of the string musicians are inserted several times. Overall, 'Carmen', however little or much it follows it's source, is a fine piece of art-type of cinema, where romanticism and cynical humor plays as much of a role as the story.

Carmen is a part of a terrorist group. Her uncle Jeannot (Godard) lends her his seaside apartment. Carmen and her group try to rob a bank. She gets tangled up and falls in love with security guard Joseph. She escapes with Joseph handcuffed to her back to uncle Jeannot's apartment.

This is not an action thriller. It has some surreal touches. The most striking thing is the explicit sexual content in this movie by director Jean-Luc Godard. It's done without sexuality. It's Joseph forcing his masturbation on Carmen in the shower. It's not the most compelling thriller. It's also not surrealistic enough to be interesting. It has a lot of different elements. Some work better than others.

Here are the bare bones of the story: Carmen wants to make a film with her friends, but has no money. The gang tries to stage an armed bank robbery, but runs into fierce opposition from Joseph, a guard. Carmen and Joseph flee together to the coast, where they stay in her Uncle Jean's apartment. Jean (Godard himself) is making a film set in a luxury hotel, but this is just a pretext for a kidnapping attempt on a businessman. From here on, the plot follows the Bizet opera beloved of so many of us.

It's fun to watch Godard working out styles and themes again, while acting outrageously in the hospital scene. Maruschka Detmers looks gorgeous, and Jacques Bonnaffe is suitably ardent and foolish. The bank robbery is worthy of Woody Allen in his best days.

Footnote 2014: I see that I neglected to mention the extraordinary camera work in the hotel sequences. How Coutard managed to get that level of intimacy and richness of colour with the light levels so low near sunset is amazing. Detmers manages to cope with Godard's need to sexualize the story very well--she is excellent.

Prenom Carmen is possibly the most accessible Godard I've seen in my quest so far. What this means, is that at least partially the traditional devices of cinema, story, characters, a turn of events, are accepted or tolerated at some face value. Characters are allowed to behave like they're in a movie without having to look back at the camera to note its presence. He puts something on the table for others, for the casual watcher, as though coming out of a decade of isolation he yearns for some company, for a theater where he's not sitting alone with his thoughts on the screen.

This desire to be open does not mean, of course, that Godard forsakes his idiosynchracy, the habitual criticizing. He plays himself in the film, the half-mad middle aged crank director chomping on his cigar like a Sam Fuller, at some point he says that "Mao was the best chef, he fed all of China", but that's almost a bad joke or an afterthought (bitterly ironic considering the hundreds of thousands Mao starved to death in that effort to feed them), and I get the impression from Prenom Carmen of an attempt to ruminate on the transience of life and time, the beauty of nature. These moments of quiet beauty, the shots of waves crashing on a beach, an evening sky with an early moon, night trains passing each other on the rails, show the desire of the director to reflect at a kind of peace.

The commitment is not total though, because Godard still clings to outside conditions, he still feels the need to comment politically, but that's only when he himself comes on screen. What used to be an object of serious consideration though, is now relegated to a quirk, to a caricaturist's signature. As such, I read it as a sign of disillusionment, like Godard partly views himself as the crony pariah of cinema he portrays in the film, pushed to the side, babbling and ranting to himself.

The film about a film device is put to rather average use, it's an opportunity to set up a heist plot then pushed to the side again. What intrigues me a lot here is the overlapping timeline. As the bank heist erupts in gunshots, the film cuts to a string quartet rehearsing Mozart, they stop and one of the players asks the girl to play with more violence. Later we see the same girl peering up close to the tablature to see is there something to be deciphered in the notes, doing that she mutters to herself a question about the clouds and "will they part to reveal torrents of life".

A central tenet in the film is something about the innocent and the guilty and how they're on opposite corners, but the suggestion on injustice is only vague, a sketch without backbone. Other quotations are banal or obvious, but the difference for me from his New Wave days, is that irreverence is no longer an aspiration. It's a source of humor, but there's an effort to reach out for the poetic. Godard playing himself in the film says at some point that we need to close our eyes, not open them, but I believe he's beginning here to open himself up to something more than interpreting or criticizing, to the possibility of seeing the world. From my little investigation, I'm looking forward to see if he carried that over to films like Nouvelle Vague and Helas pour Moi.