Robert Bloom Jean-Luc Godard's episodic opus about a man who interviews various individuals about an unknown project called "Eloge de l'amour," which will involve three couples experiencing four stages of love. The first half of the film, shot in Paris, appears in 35-mm BW and displays some of Godard's most impressive footage. The second half, set in Brittany two years earlier, is shot in super-saturated, bright digital color, deliberately crafted to overwhelm the viewer. The film is oblique, contemplative, challenging, esoteric, and profoundly beautiful. Includes a haunting piano score from Ketil Bjornstad and Arvo Part. Not too be missed.

Graham Greene In 1961, Jean-Luc Godard directed Une femme est une femme; a full colour pastiche of the contemporary relationship foibles of a troubled young couple at the heart of swinging-sixties Paris. Starring Godard's own former wife and muse Anna Karina in the lead role, it saw the filmmaker at his most joyous and creative; resulting in a finished film that was not only 'in praise of love', but very much in love with its characters and the presentation of the film itself. Forty years on however and Godard found himself looking once again at the subject of love with Éloge de l'amour (2001), a film that claims to be 'In Praise of Love', but is actually quite the opposite.Presenting a melancholic view of love that is as bewildering as the emotion itself, Éloge de l'amour opens in a monochromatic Paris that brings to mind the beauty and grandeur of Godard earlier classics, such as À bout de soufflé (1959) and Bande à part (1964). Enticing it's viewers into a world of jarring contradictions, a varied selection of characterless characters who shuffle through the streets like empty vessels dying without soul, and some of the most intense uses of cinematic composition ever seen; 'Éloge de l'amour' successfully draws us into a labyrinthine underground of dreams, thoughts, desires and hopes; never quite sure where one ends and one begins. Here, we are constantly being forced to look at the film more closely than we normally would, searching for some kind of clue to unlock the images and scenes that are being offered to us, in a way that manages to reference the full spectrum of Godard's work; from the aforementioned romanticism of Une femme est une femme, through to the Brechtian-like alienation techniques of Week End (1967), and on to the blending of the two with Slow Motion (1980).Being Godard of course, the film also throws us some political ideology and some valid arguments against Hollywood film-making and its strangle-hold like monopoly on the idea of what cinema really is. Those raised outside of the US will no doubt agree with Godard's allusions to Hollywood re-writing history to serve as entertainment, as we grow up in a world where films like The Patriot (2000), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997) and Pearl Harbour (2001) are becoming educational tools to a generation who derive little pleasure from reading books or researching history. Godard understands the importance of historical accuracy in cinema and makes the points clear (one scene in particular stands out; a scene in which an elderly man and a young couple stand outside a cinema, the old man looking at the publicity poster for Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, whist the young couple completely ignore it, more interested in an advert for The Matrix). Is Godard trying to suggest that an ignorant youth will someday slowly discard what has come before? Or is he simply showing us the cinematic climate as it is now? Éloge de l'amour is never relaxed in its messages; sometimes bordering on the same kind of inconstant ranting that for many destroyed the intensity of a film like Week End. Yet Godard curiously restrains himself here, and, with the last thirty-minutes of the film, makes his attack clearer, and more concise.Photographed in vibrantly coloured digital-video, over-saturated and manipulated, the end of the film seems much more human in comparison to the cold, black and white "pure cinema" appeal of the first hour. The focus of this segment is people; elderly people for that matter, at odds with a world and culture they no longer understand. The gesture here is touching, not only because of the way its shot and acted, but because it draws a beautiful parallel with the now seventy-something Godard's own thoughts and ruminations on life. Éloge de l'amour is certainly not easy going; it's uncompromising, jarring, distant, elusive, alienating and for the most part, hard to follow. It has a bleak and broken down view of life which creates a sour undercurrent to the optimism of the title. This is not a film that praises love; this is a film that is trying to come to terms with love in a society and culture that is slowly bastardising the word into something devoid of deeper meaning, and searching for that meaning on a horizon filled with broken vessels and broken dreams. No matter what your opinion of him, Godard has, with this film, created a cinematic dream that requires the viewer to invest some time and thought into the experience.Think of the significance of the interspersed black screens, the recurrence of the title caption, and what is achieved with the switch from monochrome stock to colour video. These are all just part of a single interpretation, but there is a joy that comes from looking at a film and being challenged to think about it. Éloge de l'amour is a film that never quite makes sense and is often hard to watch, but you thank god for its existence. Whether you see Godard as a filmmaker passed his peak and nearing the end, or whether you believe that with this film he is working up to something bigger and better - something that will bring back the magic of his early works - you can rejoice in the fact that Éloge de l'amour is every bit as intelligent, challenging, thoughtful and emotional as anything he created before.

MisterWhiplash I heard many good things about In Praise of Love- and a few very bad things- so I proceeded with the same caution with most of director Jean-Luc Godard's later films. I thought that, at best, it could call as the grand 21st century precursor to Notre Musique, his latest film, which is one of his best in many years. But watching In Praise of Love is, in some ways, even more frustrating than his bad films because it's one of his better films as a director of scenery and compositions, of attaining that "Paris" mood with his lens. He also has some points here and there that are worth listening too. Unfortunately, a lot of them are also full of hot air, and practically border on being the senile rantings of a man past his prime- ironically a film that is meant to be all about memory, what it means to remember one's country, one's personal history, one's culture, and, if luck should have it, one's possible love. There's also an underlying bitterness to the proceedings too, and even when I heard and saw the sparks of poetry that made me remember seeing the films of his prime in the 1960s, there's also a good deal here that had me raising eyebrows.Maybe that was bound to be my reaction to it, anyway. After all, I'm not just another person walking this Earth, I'm a stupid American without a history who watched Hollywood movies that are, in reality, controlled by the government. At least, that's what Godard would say. And, as well, that because we're the United States of America, we don't really have a country anyway, unlike Mexico or Brazil or whatever. Why doesn't he just use his mouth-piece actors and call me "fatty fatty fat-fat" and get it over with? Ironically as well, this is a filmmaker who once said "there's no use having sharp images when you have fuzzy ideas." Well, a good deal of the ideas are fuzzy here. Though on the reverse side there are a few that are pretty sharp. Like when the character Edgar, the main link in the story who's in part one (the black and white filmed section) an auditioning filmmaker for his project and in part two (digital) doing research two years before, talks to a woman about thinking of something, but thinking of something else. It's much simpler an idea than a lot of the other semantics Godard floats around, and it's actually a good little speech. I also thought the old men (wait, is 'old' right according to Godard, or child, can't say) discussing their own pasts, and what it means for them, or what it doesn't mean. That it's still there for them, their own horrors and occasional joys, are enough.But what becomes all the more frustrating are the ideas that don't hold any water, or seem a little patched together from scraps of notes from Godard's ramblings out on the streets of Paris and, of course, by his long-loved beach scenery. What am I to make of the whole concept of there being no adults, or there being adults? Or the blank pages in the books (nothingness I guess, that memory of what's written is no more, I had no idea really). Or the not-too-subtle attacks on Spielberg? How do we know what Godard is saying to is really true anyway, because of the veneer and sometimes appeal of the documentary form? And what confounds me more is how at times, when the usual tactic of Godard's to do the overlapping conversations- this time in different languages in spurts- didn't bother me as much, as I found that to be an interesting way for Edgar to go about hearing things and experiencing people's words and memories for his 'project'. Unlike past Godard entries, particularly King Lear and Nouvelle Vague (1990), the poetry, if it is as such, in Godard's essay-form of film-making holds some water here, and there are a few passages that come along that are striking, that do connect with the splendid street photography and other set-ups.Nevertheless, it's still hard for me to recommend the picture, unless you're already a Godard fan and will check it out either way of what I say, because of the sense deep down of a cranky deconstructivism in Godard's messages, and unlike his best satires and experimental work doesn't have the balls to call on both sides (Week End had that best). So, France has a "real" memory and American doesn't? Why, because Shakespeare wrote half his plays there? I'm not against people who want to put some criticism to Americans *thoughtfully*, but when done in such a blunt, repetitive tactic, it becomes less like philosophy and socio-political discourse than it becomes more like name-calling and shallow, chronic dissatisfaction with any system outside of his own, albeit with some reservations there too. In Praise of Love is not one of Godard's worst, but it stops and goes in how it really connects, and at the end I wondered- aside from getting the shots of Paris and the countryside with his great DP, and the small bits of inspiration- why the hell Godard is still even making films anyway.

lizgrass Jean-Luc Godard is a cinematic genius, there is no denying that. He was a major player in one of the most influential movements in the history of film, the French New Wave. His films Breathless, Contempt and Masculin-Féminin are among the greatest ever made. He is a legend to movie-goers and filmmakers alike.That said, this movie is a dud. In Praise of Love (Éloge de l'Amour) is confusing rather than enigmatic, and boring rather than thoughtful.I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I wanted to act intelligent and proclaim, `Ce film est excellent!' Mais, I mean, but, it isn't. Watching In Praise of Love is like reading a graduate philosophy textbook that is written in French poetry, with translation in hyroglyphics.The story, if one can call it that, centers on Edgar, a man confused about his own emotions, who is trying to make a film (or novel, or opera) about relationships. In a flashback that comprises nearly the entire second half of the movie, we come to find out that one of the women Edgar was hoping to cast is in fact a woman he met years earlier when speaking to a couple persecuted during World War II who are in the process of selling their story to Steven Speilberg. (Don't worry, I've seen the movie, and I'm not quite sure myself.)Several mentions are made of `stupid Americans', and this movie made me feel like the stupidest of all. But Godard is Godard, so rest assured, his strange vignettes are just as haunting and aesthetically beautiful as they are perplexing.