Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
FrogGlace
In other words,this film is a surreal ride.
gavin6942
In a palace of Paris. Two detectives are investigating a two-year-old murder. Emile and Francoise Chenal are putting pressure on Jim Fox Warner, a boxing manager, who owes them a huge amount of money. But Jim also owes money to the Mafia, and it seems the boxing match he is counting on to bail out will not be sufficient...As far as Godard's "second wave" goes, this is not one of the more celebrated. It has some of his strange flourishes, such as the intense piano drowning out conversations (a very Godard thing to do). And it is interesting that the film takes place essentially inside of a hotel, a fine place to put a mystery.For American audiences, the two actresses who may be most familiar are Emmanuelle Seigner as Princess of the Bahamas and Julie Delpy as the "wise young girl". In the case of Delpy, this is ahead of her big American break through Richard Linklater.
Bob Taylor
...of all the Godard films I've seen, and I've seen practically all of them. I don't care much about the plot: who Jim Fox Warner is, and why he takes such a casual approach to what must be a big fight, who Tiger Jones is either, and why the two girls are hanging around the hotel suite; I don't care much about the old Mafioso who seems to have his finger in every pie (played marvelously by Alain Cuny, with that splendidly seamed face). The 40 million Francs that Chenal owes are just a detail; the cheating that his wife Francoise is doing doesn't move me much... no, all these details are but a backdrop for the wonderful lesson in cinema that Godard gives us here. I've never seen him take such care over rooms and corridors, kitchens and storerooms as he does here. It's lovely--what he does with this Parisian hotel makes this a great experience. Narrative has never interested him much, but it doesn't matter: visuals and music are used very well throughout.Nathalie Baye has never been more beautiful on screen: Godard's camera is in love with her. Claude Brasseur gives a good performance as the pilot whose airline is coming apart.
jonathan-577
My first foray into 80s Godard - haven't even seen any early stuff for years - benefits from the old showdown between Godard's European attenuation and the outrageous vulgarity he mines from his Yankee progenitors. All gangster-film elements are here, and all are brutally alienated from their original contexts. Noir-style orchestral punctuation marks blurt and disappear incongruously; frequently topless femmes fatales occasion some pretty smart-to-funny gender commentary, especially the pugilist's boob-boxing scene; the big massacre at the climax seems to fall right out of the sky. Best of all is Jean-Pierre Leaud's lurking schmuck detective, a great goof of a performance that gives a big boost to the film's sense of rhythm. Because the pleasures are largely on the surface, I'll have to run it again before I can tell you much about the plot, and about an hour in the working-through of the themes gets a little too talky. But the arm's length treatment of the source material distills rather than diffuses their entertainment value: good arty fun.
the_mojo
This film demonstrates editing, structure and mis-en-scene perfectly. It's clear that with every scene, Godard has thought carefully about positioning and in a few shots, has cleverly manipulated the use of mirrors or glass. The camera never moves in the film – it stays still in every sequence, and so the positioning of the characters is paramount. Instead of the camera moving to capture all the characters on screen, many scenes involve the characters moving themselves after an entrance of a another person to ensure that facial expressions can be seen. Music also plays a huge part in this film, as it indicates moments of tension, or importance, such as when the audience sees 'la famille' for the first time in the film. Background noise is also evident, with many layers of sound to the film, such as background traffic noise from the open window, as well as the piano player in the café. The scenes themselves and the cleverness from behind the camera make this film worth watching. However, the plot itself is weak, with many superfluous characters, and bizarre situations (such as the boxer and 'Mister Jim' with the two girls). The many different characters and their individual situations are closely linked, through their interaction with each other, but the ending is immensely unsatisfactory.
