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Analytical whimsy, captivating dissonance. Life's "mauvais théâtre" given Eastman Color and Cinemascope rectangles, forever on the verge of turning into an MGM fantasy circa 1957. The Parisian pixie (Anna Karina) enters and exits the story with a wink, at the Trocadero cabaret she hops onstage in sailor's outfit and demurely doffs it under rotating color lights (Logan's Bus Stop), "je suis très belle" is her byword. She wants a baby "in the next 24 hours," but her stolid beau (Jean-Claude Brialy) is saving himself for the Sunday bicycle race. "Why are men such cowards?" "To compensate for the nastiness of women." Enter the chum named Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo), and their fickle triangle proceeds like John Osborne choreographed by René Clair. Like Pasolini's atheistic nostalgia for faith, here is Jean-Luc Godard's modernist nostalgia for classicism, the yearning for Singin' in the Rain and the awareness that it can no longer be made. Michel Legrand's lush score is splintered by street noises, Nouvelle Vague in-jokes purposefully crumble the texture: Belmondo at the bar turns to Jeanne Moreau and asks how Jules et Jim is going, "moderato" she says. (Truffaut returns the favor by quoting the lovers' book-cover quarrel in Stolen Kisses.) Burt Lancaster's grin, Manet on a blurry television screen, six minutes of Charles Aznavour's poetry wafting out of the jukebox. The anecdote about the coquette's letters of course becomes Montparnasse-Levallois (Paris vu par...), a curving 180° degree pan finds its completion in 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle. Inventive gaiety is but a veil for anxiety, the scrutiny of Karina swings from adoring to ruthless and the bouncy camera turns ominously interrogative as it stalks the heroine around the apartment in a prowling POV. "It's hard to tell if this is a comedy or a tragedy, or a masterpiece." Scorsese in New York, New York is the great inheritor. Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
--- Fernando F. Croce |