Nueva ola

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.

Godard's (or anyone's) greatest film features fading matinee-idol Alain Delon and the beautiful, enormously talented Domiziana Giordano as archetypal Man and Woman at the end of the twentieth century. The image track tells one story (a narrative involving characters who gradually swap dominant and submissive relationship roles) and the sound track another (the dialogue consists almost entirely of literary quotations from Dante to Proust to Rimbaud to Raymond Chandler, etc.) yet both frequently intersect to create a rich tapestry of sight & sound. Godard uses dialectics involving man and woman, Europe and America, art and commerce, sound and image & upper and lower class to create a supremely beautiful work of art that functions as an affirmation of the possibility of love in the modern world (and a new poetics of cinema) and that also serves as a curiously optimistic farewell to socialism. Unusual for late-Godard is the constantly tracking and craning camera courtesy of the peerless William Lubtchansky.

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.

This is an empty shell of a film, washed up and abandoned by the vibrancy which once pulsed through the Godard canon. The fresh approach from the sixties has 'matured' into little more than a largely fruitless exercise in intellectual pretension, occasionally engaging (the mere presence of Alain Delon is enough for this), but more often than not wilfully obfuscatory and infuriatingly half-baked.

The editing is as lively as ever but serves for little when used to accompany the thin story of the countess (Domiziana Giordano trying ever so hard to be enigmatic) and her shady business dealings. There are too many only half-explored ideas, such as the familiar Marxist class considerations, expressed in cod philosophical voice-over musings, for the film to achieve a satisfactory sense of wholeness. Indeed, superficially clever but ultimately meaningless assertions such as `Maybe a man isn't enough for a woman, or perhaps he's too much' would be more in place in the glossy surroundings of a Calvin Klein advert. The title acts as an ironic and sad reminder of what the director once was, but I get the feeling he isn't really trying any more.

How do you film the air for a movie? May you find the past with the help of present, or look for the present through the past? Where are the elements of life (nature, love, thoughts...) in the image that reflects the screen? Is it possible to talk and work with a symbol you never used thirty years ago? And which are the signs of second chances?

Like Hemingway's 'Along the River and Beyond the Trees', 'Nouvelle vague' is a film about the feelings of a mid-aged man in his relation with himself after a car-crash in a Middle Europe road. Godard himself lives around the place, in a beautiful scenery close to nature. The filmmaker, since 'A bout de souffle', smelled the flavor of the countryside. 'Nouvelle vague' is a film for senses. You hear-a-heart beating along the trees.

Bien pour Godard, Lubtchansky, Delon...