Jean-Luc Godard really should have retired long before 1985, basking in the glory of his early triumphs such as BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE Soufflé, 1960). For later on he became a sad caricature of himself as a filmmaker. Here he artificially tries to revive the corpse of his youthful abilities and fails abysmally. This film is revoltingly pretentious, phoney, false, arrogant, clumsy, stupid, empty, vacuous, - what other adjectives can I think of? None of them are sufficient to damn the film enough. I recently obtained the DVD for the simple reason that I wanted to see what Julie Delpy was like when she was 14. This was her first film role. I shouldn't have bothered. She has few lines and merely flits around meaninglessly, like most of the other characters in this ridiculous excuse for a film. Godard makes most of the women, and one of the men, engage in pointless nudity, and we see lots of tits, especially those of Emmanuelle Seignier, whose second film it was (she was then 19), but mercifully Godard did not inflict this duty on the child Delpy, who keeps her nightie on (but why she is always in her nightie is never explained, just as nothing is ever explained, because geniuses like Godard do not need to explain). The power of Godard's name and reputation made many famous people agree to be in this empty vehicle, and waste their talents. I would say it would have damaged the talented Nathalie Baye's reputation to accept such a drear lead role as Francoise in this film, as it made her look so down-at-heel and washed-up (if, that is, one can be both down and up at the same time, and I have not committed some grammatical atrocity to match Godard's cinematic one). Some women may be excited to know that we get to see Claude Brasseur's willy, for what it is worth, though there is no reason for this. This happens in between him looking ghastly, desperate, and sad, which is just about all he is required to do for 95 minutes. (Can being married to Baye be that bad?) This film is a real 'downer', and there I go again with one of those directional adjectives, although how one can go down any further than rock bottom I have not yet determined. In this film we have the sight of the famous Johnny Hallyday, who for decades was the universal heartthrob not only of every French woman but of many French men as well, and if there were ever anything that really puzzled me about the French even more than boudin (blood sausage) and tête de veau (calf's head), it is Johnny Hallyday and his inexplicable appeal to a whole nations of Gauls. He does nothing in this film of note but sleep with Baye in a melancholy fashion. Baye looks so pained by this that maybe she discovered that Hallyday really had bad breath. The one bright spot in this film is the equally meaningless appearance of the old veteran Alain Cuny in a few mysterious scenes as 'the Prince'. Who the Prince is and why he is there is only roughly sketched. But the crusty old queen is always interesting to watch. Incredible that he lived to be 86, with all that romping around with boys. And my question is this: what ever happened to Alain Cuny's trunk in the entrance hall, covered by a cloth, after the Nazis left Paris? Only D. D. could tell us that, presumably. A mystery worthy of ENGRENAGES. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. But I fear there are no ears left acute enough to take my meaning.
Review of Detective
