In Praise of Love (Godard, 2001): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm
This is part of a mini Jean-Luc Godard season (details here) at the ICA Cinema.and screens from a 4K restoration.
Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard’s 2001 feature, his best since Nouvelle Vague
(1990), is in some respects as difficult as that film, though
visually it’s stunning and unique even among Godard’s work. The
first part, set in contemporary Paris, was shot in black-and-white
35-millimeter, while the second, set in Brittany two years earlier,
is in floridly oversaturated color. A young man (Bruno Putzulu)
interviews men and women for an undefined project called “Eloge de
l’Amour,” which will involve three couples (young, adult, and
old) experiencing four stages of love (meeting, physical passion,
separation, and reconciliation). One young woman he spends time with
is the granddaughter of a couple he’s met earlier, former members
of the French resistance negotiating to sell their story to a
Hollywood studio. As in his magnum opus, Histoire(s) du Cinema,
Godard is centrally concerned with the ethics of true and false
representation and with the lost promise of cinema, which leads to
some anti-American reflections ranging from reasonable to
over-the-top. This is a twilight film, dark and full of sorrow, yet
lyrical and beautiful as well.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
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