Prenom Carmen Details

Pretentious navel-gazing

This is what I don't like about French cinema. I tried hard to stick with it, and gave up after the 'bank robbery' which I thought was a joke, with some people not affected at all, so I had no idea what was real and what wasn't. What with the string quartet rehearsing in the background of the whole film and it became a bit of intellectual masturbation. Needless to say the acting was appalling, at least in this context. I think this is the kind of things that gives 'modern' and 'art' a bad name.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Three films in one; all good

Jean-Luc's most impish film in a while, a largely successful commentary on the impossibility of making films any more, by a director who sees himself as the one sane person in the madhouse, but who has chosen to try to get ill himself (and make some improper suggestions to his nurse while doing so). These sequences are very funny - who'd have thought Godard was such a natural comedian.

Meanwhile, his niece is part of a group of sort of Situationist terrorists, whose latest bank robbery has led her to fall in love with a security guard who decides to run off with her. They play out a postmodern version of 'Carmen' in increasingly desperate fashion, while a string quartet practice Beethoven and have trouble because one of the violinists keeps making mistakes. Just like Godard himself, seems to be the suggestion.

If there's no such thing, then, as a perfect film, we'd better make do with this, a deeply imperfect one - messy and fragmented and forever guying the audience - but it's entertaining and fun in a way that Godard's films haven't been for almost fifteen years.