Numero deux [1975)

Back.  Return return.  Long absence.

Unrestful battle to the death with corporate finance.

And Jeannot mentions Georges.  Beauregard?

Yes, almost certainly.

And so politics becomes sex.  But sex remains politics.  The two phenomena simultaneously.

Like dependent events and statistical fluctuations.

Ah, statistics…

Not the fun stuff of batting averages.  No, we mean correlations and covariance and stultifying minutiae.

And that’s where the money comes from.

Godard after 45 years had finally finished with Paris.  Done.  Fin.

Il y a equals = Grenoble?

A new era with Anne-Marie Miéville.  Sonimage.  Mon ton son image son.

Wordplay cures illnesses.

The glissando of sliding meaning.

Slippage.

I want to write film criticism as if I am writing a viola sonata.  Everything is possible.

Amazingly…amazingly…Wikipedia gives a synopsis.

Thank you kind soul…kind, fastidious soul.

Is it the same in France?  Numero deux est la merde?

Yes, Godard finds a way to shock…again.  Like Salò, but in a mundane grocery store of quotidian pain.

Wordplay and illnesses.

Is it Sandrine Battistella?

Is it Pierre Oudrey?

Are the child actors the best players in this film (in the tradition of Bresson)?

And Alexandre Rignault.  The old man?  I am too lazy.  It is already a service.  Mon beau souci.

The anarchy of breasts.

Both enjoy in different ways.

Pain is not simple.

It was this point at which Godard became a true revolutionary.  With his army surplus jacket.  Inconsequential.

Having survived the revolution.  The upheaval.  To live on into the era of Bruce Lee kicking Chuck Norris’ ass.

We see briefly.

But mainly we see fatigue.  The fatigue of Beethoven.  Facile technician.  Adjusting color timing instinctively.  Habit.

Sometime you must take a break from James Bond to question the fundamental things.

White people problems, they say.

No, I see the same in true cultures…in China…in Africa.

Unique modes of expression.  Unlearning.

The greatest service is to convey the feelings of the film.  If these feelings harmonize with the dissonance of your pathetique lives, then you are like me.  Searching for small miracles.

Actors cannot touch non-actors.  Praise be to actors who appear to have no technique–who appear to be non-actors.

Either way.  Doesn’t matter.  Matters.

-PD

Une Femme mariee [1964)

I want to write about the weirdest scene in Godard’s filmography up till this point, but I don’t.  It’s not a pleasant scene.  It is uncomfortable.  Unnerving.  I want to write about the pointy bras which figure visually into so much of this film, but I feel silly.  Pointy bras.

I want to talk about Macha Méril‘s hair and how once again Godard evokes Louise Brooks, but I…what?

The title.  It had to get more vague.  No.

There’s really no way of talking about this movie other than in its own language.  I often do that.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  But many times it is the only way.  Here.

It slips through the fingers so quickly.  If you do not write immediately, it is gone.  I take a break.  I charge my computer.  It has escaped.

Truth be told, I never had that good a grasp on it.

I have to get worked up to talk about a film like this.  I can’t check the news headlines for ten minutes on waynemadsenreport.com and then come back to it.

She is married.  Unhappy.  Every day she pretends.  She is an actor dating an actor.  Not the same.  The theater and its double.

Artaud is on the tip of his tongue.  Godard.  What is he driving at?

This is elusive film.  A cubist film.  Fragments.  If I stop to pause, it leaves me again.

I cannot give this treatise any ground.  Yes, a treatise like Debord.  In little mini-paragraphs.  Theses.  Something.  I don’t know.  Je’n s’pas.

It’s quick.  Before she’s said it [bam!] it’s gone.  He cuts.  Montage.  Gone.

Roger Leenhardt.  I did not know.  We don’t know.  Barnes & Ignoble.  Ig Nobel.  Banana peels.  Friction.  Slippery slip slopery.  Splits.

Does she say Thalidomide?  It moves so fast.  You are not French.  You have audible French, visual wordplay, puns everywhere…unfunny puns on soul, angel, sea.  Words in the middle of words.  Treatise.  trEATise.  Focus on a part.  How does the part tell a different story than the whole?  Passage.  Pas sage.  Unwise.  Not wise.  No sagacity.

You have to be on your toes with Godard…even to this day.  His mind is the quickest, slickest, oiled mechanism.  The actor…just a mechanism.  Is that a good translation?  It matters.  Are you reading the subtitles?

Some nights maybe you don’t feel like subtitles.  You want to watch National Lampoon’s Vacation…

My queue.  It is the same.  Juxtaposition.  Beethoven.  No accident.  Accidentals.  We reach like bad Joyces.  James…

The Holocaust comes into the oeuvre.  Why the barbers?  Indeed, she says…

Memory.  For him, integral.  For her, rien.  Give me ten more pointy bras.  Let me measure my breasts…nipple to nipple.  The world turns on the tips of tits.  No truer words ever spoken.  Into the arms of Venus de Milo.

Her laughing is like a rodent…a squirrel perhaps.  And then a woodpecker.  It is almost indistinguishable from sobbing.  Laugh tears.  Oh James…

Ingmar got nothing out of it, he says.  Godard took the long shot (extended take) and perverted it.  Torture.  Orgasmic laughs meant to liven up a marriage.  The couple sit and fidget.  Will they put on the Cal Tjader?

And then the husband threatens to rape his own wife.  Is that translation correct?  A significant line.  Vital.  Play acting?  I don’t think so.

Truth in jokes.  Expressed nowhere else.  Why the barbers?

If you sought an insular review, you have found it.  Only a cryptologist would claim spoilers.  And thus we can justify that this is indeed film criticism.  Mere reviews…

If you could double the size of your breasts with a Peruvian serum, would your husband blue you and make you Jell-O-sated?

All the brunettes are neutron blondes in the negative print.  Hitchcock has sensors under your seats to know when your butt has arisen.  Orly.

And the doctor cannot explain love.  Where does sex end and love begin, or vice versa?  Science still compares.  Love is neurochemically like OCD.  Quitting Facebook brings on symptoms akin to drug withdrawal.  Which drug?  How addictive?

It’s over.

-PD