Le Redoutable (2017)

Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius | 107 minutes | biography, comedy | Actors: Louis Garrel, Stacy Martin, Bérénice Bejo, Micha Lescot, Grégory Gadebois, Félix Kysyl, Arthur Orcier, Marc Fraize, Romain Goupil, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Guido Caprino, Emmanuele Aita, Matteo Martari, Stéphane Varupenne, Philippe Girard, Laurent Sofiati, Quentin Dolmaire, Esteban Carvajal-Alegria

Celebrated filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard had already made dozens of acclaimed films when he made ‘La Chinoise’ in 1967, starring his second wife Anne Wiazemsky. Political ideas with a Marxist slant were present to a greater and lesser extent in his previous films, but around this time his film is becoming increasingly socially critical and displays a sympathy for militantism and Maoism. Godard had expected with ‘La Chinoise’ that he would be admired in China, but to his surprise the film was dismissed by them as reactionary rubbish.

This marks the beginning of what is presented in ‘Le Redoutable’ (2017) as Godard’s midlife crisis. At thirty-seven, Godard feels like an old prick and tries to reinvent and prove himself, not least for his wife Anne Wiazemsky, who is seventeen years younger. Godard dismisses his earlier work as irrelevant and immerses himself in the student protests of 1968 in Paris. However, the students are not waiting for him and gradually ‘Le redoutable’ we see a Godard who slowly makes himself more and more impossible with everything and everyone, first with his friends, then with his colleagues and finally with his wife.

Yet in ‘Le Redoutable’ we continue to feel sympathy for Godard, who here resembles a Woody Allen character: socially and motorically clumsy, in conflict with everyone and not least with himself. It is a pity, however, that this period in Godard’s career is portrayed too black and white as a kind of mental bewilderment that cannot be fixed. And that while in 1967 after ‘La Chinoise’ he still made the great ‘Week-end’.

In ‘Le Redoutable’, director Michel Hazanavicius regularly winks at Godard’s visual language, and completely against Godard’s artistic views, in this period, there is also something to laugh about. For example, in the scene where Godard and Anna walk through their house stark naked and wonder why there is so much nudity in movies. But what especially sticks is the subtle play of Louis Garrel and Stacy Martin, which makes the doomed relationship between Godard and Wiazemsky palpable.