Claudio Carvalho The student Marie (Myriem Roussel), who plays basketball and works in the gas station of her father, gets pregnant without having intercourse. The taxi driver Joseph (Thierry Rode) becomes upset and the newcomer in town Gabriel (Philippe Lacoste) convinces Joseph to accept her pregnancy. Meanwhile the college student Eva (Anne Gautier) has an affair with her professor.In the 80's, the exhibition of the polemic "Je Vous Salue, Marie" was forbidden in Brazil due to pressure of the Catholic Church in the government. I believe this unexpected marketing is the greatest attraction of this boring movie. The screenplay is a complete mess and the soundtrack and the nudities of Myriem Roussel and Anne Gautier are the best offered in this pretentious philosophic crap. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Je Vous Salue, Marie"

tsf-1962 The late Pope John Paul II said this film "deeply wounds the religious sentiments of believers." It may well be that the Roman Catholic hierarchy's cover-up of pedophile priests has done more to wound the religious sentiments of believers than any mere movie could. The controversy over "Hail, Mary," like the controversies surrounding "The Last Temptation of Christ," "The Passion of the Christ," and "The Da Vinci Code" shows that any time a filmmaker deals with religious issues in his work he risks offending a sizable constituency. That's understandable: faith is an important part of most people's lives, and in a world rife with religious divisions you can't please everyone. Who knows? Maybe you shouldn't try. "Hail Mary," though obscure and enigmatic in Godard's finest manner, is nowhere as blasphemous as most of Luis Bunuel's stuff. In updating the story of the Nativity to contemporary France he nowhere denies the historical truth of the Virgin Birth or the divinity of Christ. "Hail, Mary" marks a turning-point in Godard's career when he abandoned the materialism of his Maoist period for a more spiritual, philosophical approach. Beautiful Myriem Roussel gives a striking portrayal of the Virgin Mary as a high school basketball player who works at her father's gas station; when her thuggish boyfriend Joseph (Thierry Rode) learns she's pregnant he's understandably suspicious. The film is touching as it deals with two ordinary people trying to make sense of something extraordinary entering and disrupting their lives; one can well believe that the historical Mary and Joseph went through just such struggles as the couple in the film. We get only a brief glimpse of the boy Jesus, but his death on the Cross is clearly foreshadowed. Interestingly, Godard uses some of the same music that Pasolini used in "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew." "Hail Mary" deals with complicated themes of the meaning of life, the wonder of birth, creation v. evolution, in an intelligent and thoughtful way far superior to the strident agitprop produced by American evangelicals. A beautiful if perplexing film.

MisterWhiplash After checking out a couple of Godard's eighties work (First Name: Carmen, which is a very good movie, and King Lear, which is one of the most fascinating, car-wreck adaptations of Shakespeare to come out of European cinema), I knew I had to check out Hail Mary, as by historical account got the kind of treatment that was almost bestowed on Last Temptation of Christ and Dogma. The religious right in America and abroad thought of the film as blasphemous (many said this before seeing this) and crude. I wouldn't compare Hail Mary to Last Temptation in controversy, since neither one really has anything to be controversial about. Whatever a viewer might take the film as, good or bad, it doesn't degrade or spit on the Christian religion and its eternally 'sacred' story of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus. It is Godard, after all, and outside of Weekend (a straight-up satire of the 60's radicalism and revolutionary air in France at the time), he hasn't tried to deliberately get people ticked off by his work. By my account, though, Hail Mary isn't a great movie, a good movie, or a particularly engrossing account of the tale, despite the hype.The story is fiddled through the Godardian consciousness as such: a teenage basketball player named Mary (Myriem Roussel), with a boyfriend who drives a Taxi named Joseph (Thierry Rode), is visited by a foul and entirely no non-sense uncle Gabriel (Philippe Lacoste, one of only two acting appearances ever) and told she will conceive God's child despite never having had sex with no one, including Joseph. This sparks a rage in Joseph, and disillusionment in Mary, who can't figure out what to do with the situation. The rest of the film unfolds in a style that reminded me of what Godard did later on with Nouvelle Vague, where-in whenever images are presented that suggest that Godard (in another life outside of being a new-wave pioneer) been more fit in his later days to be directing nature documentaries as opposed to feature-length films. There aren't many emotions outside of coldness between the supposed lovers Mary and Joseph, and scenes of a compulsively naked Roussel that inspire only one really memorable shot (I won't reveal it, but I found it freaky in how real it might have or might have not been).There were problems I had with Hail Mary, as I have stated, and when the film was over the recent religious film gaining hoopla came to mind- Gibson's Passion of the Jesus. The two problems I had with both films were these- the first, for non-Christians or non believers in HIM, there is not real entry portal to really get into the sympathy of the character of Mary. She feels pain, resentment, love, all of these things for God, and the way the film presents it if you don't have or have not had before a kind of feeling or attitude towards God and Christianity (the entailing symbolism Godard uses included) the dramatizes of it all won't fit. The second, for a film, even what is supposedly a film in high regards to the great artists of the celluloid, dealing with as strong a subject as immaculate conception (with POTC it was the gradual torture and death of Jesus, besides the point), this is a highly boring and dis-jointed result. For all the images of nudity and skies and oceans and roads, there isn't really much that it amounts to. This isn't helped by the performances either- Roussel, Rode, Lacoste, and even young Juliette Binoche either didn't get the right directions (or the on-the-fly style of Godard didn't work with them), or they just pushed the realism envelope to its limit and too beyond. Roussel's a lovely young girl and a fair actress, but when the audience gets to see a supporting character (Anderson's character) show more emotion in her face, her eyes, there's trouble. Rode also creates little by over-acting, or not being there at all emotionally. Perhaps another minor beef I had with Godard's treatment of the subject matter was this- by taking the 'His creation' story (which it is at base level, believe in it or not), really as much of a leap of faith as is the details of Jesus' crucifixion, in such a dead-pan, no humor, morose attitude, Godard tries for a kind of neo-realism that backfires. Why not make the film a straight out satire, or have fun with the story elements like with Gabriel's character (I was hoping his would be the one cool element of the film, but it's hard to keep of track of him)? The short film that precedes the film by occasional collaborator Anne-Marie Mieville, at least has a light-hearted feeling to it, and let's art combining well with empathetic characters (Smith's Dogma serves as another example, however more in the mainstream than here). By the time Godard rumbles and plods through his images and music, a soundtrack that manages some of the few interesting parts of the film (Bach, Dvorak, and Coltrane are some artists among others that sometimes get annoyingly sampled over and over to no effect), and gets to Mary's end moment, the catharsis is empty and frustrating. Here his logic is generally, if not altogether, a one-note concept stretched out with practically one-note emotions strung out from the watchable yet poor actors, and there's one or two sub-plots in the film that boggles the mind. Maybe if I watched the film without sound it'd be of some interest on a mis-en-scene level, though even that wears thin. It's surely my least favorite film of the director's so far, and at best I can say that, like 'The Passion', you won't get it (or Roussel's private parts if you're that type of person) out of your head.

Peggy-7 I found a copy of this film for three bucks, I figured that was a great deal, even if it is in a different language (lucky for me there were subtitles)! When this film came out in the mid eighties it was all about controversy. Many people called the film Blasphemy, so what if it is, you don't have to watch it. But with all that aside, anyone who doesn't spend every night talking to a god, will proudly see this film for what it is, and was. AN AMAZING FILM, a classical TRIUMPH! If anyone can track down a copy of this at least TRY to watch it!On a scale of ONE to TEN, HAIL MARY gets a TEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!