Hey folks, Harry here... Aaaaahhhh, finally a review of Godard's new film from someone that loves Godard!!! Folks... Godard is an acquired taste. It isn't above certain people or below others... it's just a taste that requires developing. Godard is a cinematic poet... someone working less with plot and more with provoking an emotional state from his audience... He's an evocative filmmaker. One of the great disappointments that I currently feel is not having seen his film at Cannes with him in attendence. What a moment that would have been. Sigh. But read on, the Fanciful Norwegian seems to get it!

Hi, it's me again with another review of "Eloge de l'amour," Godard's latest.

Just to get this out of the way, my opinion of the film is immensely more favorable that Solamen's. In her review, Solamen said the festival organizers should've chosen a "much more interesting and younger French film director." But for my money, there ARE no French filmmakers more consistently interesting than Godard, regardless of age.

"Eloge de l'amour" is another film from Godard in the tradition of "Sauve qui peut (la vie)" -- in other words, there's none of the in-your-face sociopolitical commentary of his 1960s work, and the cynicism that once pervaded his films ("Weekend" and so forth) has been replaced with a sort of lyrical melancholy. Perhaps the best analogy is that, whereas his earlier works were essentially filmed essays, his films over the past two decades are more like poems.

"Eloge de l'amour" is basically a love story -- actually, a series of love stories, featuring three couples of varying ages (young, middle-aged, and elderly) going through the four stages of your typical relationship (the first encounter, sexual passion, "the fight," and reconciliation). We see these four phases in reverse order, and while each couple is presently going through one phase, we also see glimpses of the previous phases of their relationships.

It sounds a bit confusing, but narrative has never been a primary concern with Godard. Even so, he courteously simplifies things a bit by shooting in both color and black-and-white so the audience knows instantly which scenes are happening "now" and which have already occurred (interestingly, the scenes set in the present are in black-and-white, while those set in the past are in color are filmed in a high-contrast style that gives the characters an eerie, dreamlike quality as they move across the screen. Combined with the multilayered soundtrack (a typical Godardian melange of dialogue, narration and classical music), the result is that one finds themself falling ! in! to a state of reverie, keeping the more or less intellectual nature of the "storyline" from becoming too suffocating.

All of the other Godard trademarks are here, to boot: the nonstop literary references, the frequent use of captions, and the use of a surrogate Godard, who in this case provides the narration that ties the whole thing together. The unnamed narrator is working on some sort of project (a novel? a film?) requiring a dissection of modern relationships, which is hashed out over the three storylines. Interestingly, the narration is provided by Juliette Binoche (the last person you'd choose to stand in for Godard), who unfortunately doesn't appear in the film.

Beyond mere description, there's not much I can say about this film. It simply washes over you, stopping every now and then to allow you the chance to snatch little moments of emotional truth that will resonate to anyone who's ever been in a meaningful relationship. Some, of course, will be turned off by Godard's dense approach to the subject matter, but after decades of rehashed boy-meets-girl love stories in which only the names and locations change, it's refreshing to see a movie that's every bit as complex as its subject truly is.

The Fanciful Norwegian