Review of Masculin Féminin (1966) by Kajori A — 10 May 2008

I've seen this film three times, but watched it yet again last evening. This is one of my favourite Godard films - youthful, irreverent and joyous in spite of the didacticism and glum prophesying. The young people in the film do what young people do everywhere in the world - discuss politics and revolution (well, I don't think they do this any more, not since hair colour took over as the main topic of conversation anyway!), listen to rock music, watch movies, hold hands and make love.

But these happen to be the swinging sixties, so they also talk about the Vietnam War, are obsessed with birth control and sex, wear go go boots and mini skirts and play pinball. As Pauline Kael has observed in her famous review, what gives Masculin, Feminin its special freshness are the little unscripted moments.

Faces and gestures often reveal more than words: Paul, when he tries to flip a cigarette into his mouth to impress Madeleine, or a glazed looking Madeleine as she valiantly struggles to stop herself from crying.

Everyone is desperately trying to be "cool", but it is the rawness, the vulnerability, a kind of raggedness around the edges that Godard doggedly captures on film, and that continues charm. That, and the fact that the film is a clever pastiche (Hollywood films, documentaries, pop culture references, journalistic interviews), made long before someone like Tarantino came along and made it fashionable.

Oh, and Chantal Goya has got to be the most formidably chic and delightfully fey 20-year-old in the history of the motion picture!