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First Name: Carmen (1983)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

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From Time Out Film Guide

Something like a remake of Pierrot le Fou in its cosmic despair, doom-laden romanticism, and stinging, insolent wit. Replacing Bizet with Beethoven and recasting the operatic cigarette girl as a cheapo terrorist, this is really an intimate journal musing about three movies in one. As in Passion, there is a bleak acknowledgement of the difficulty of making films (with the string quartet's Beethoven rehearsals indicating how the film-maker is going astray in the tone and tempo of his attempts to communicate). Then there is the story of Carmen and Don José, which obstinately refuses to get off the ground, grinding into a grim stasis where l'amour fou dies miserably as the naked lovers take sexual stock. And finally there is Godard himself, drawing all the threads together in a confessional performance as a burnt-out film-maker languishing in a lunatic asylum, out of which he is tempted only to suffer both professional and personal betrayal by Carmen (last name Karina?). Not for nothing does the film carry a nostalgic dedication 'in memoriam small movies'. This, throwaway jokes and all, is Godard back at his most nouvelle vague in years.

Author: TM 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Technoguy said...

Posted on Oct 17 2008 01:54 Prenom Carmen
This film works. It’s the process of making a film. It’s the story of Carmen using
Beethoven rather than Bizet.It’s a documentary which is a fiction. A washed up
director,Godard, is visited by his niece in a mental hospital.She wants to make
a film and wants to loan his video cameras and apartment by the sea.She turns
bank robber with the terrorist group to fund their activities .They aim to kidnap
an industrialist or his daughter Everything is done in comic book style She falls in love and out with the guard at the bank.Their love affair
is shot in the apartment and in a hotel.We have comic book betrayal,jealousy
and passion.Her uncle leaves hospital and helps in the making of the film:
his every corrosive quote is documented by his amenuensis.
The film uses several framing devices:the sight and sound of rolling waves,
a string quartet rehearsing Beethoven whose mistakes show the difficulty
of film making,the mad director,the crazy bank robbery.all in all it somehow
worksThe coming together of several elements makes individual progress
difficult. And not surprisingly capitalism gets slated.The violinist is the remote
figure loved by the guard but who is not his girlfriend:it is suggested she
is day-dreaming the whole thing up.There are multiple frames of reference
in a multi-tiered story.The narrative of Carmen a mere peg to be ignored.
Picture making is akin to crime: stealing life, since film as a medium is
an end in itself ,a Brechtian tool for deconstruction .Godard does the whole
thing with such wit and panache,interweaving music and image and sends
himself up in the process.The waves even recall New Wave.

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