Well crafted. The movie connections are a delight for movie lovers, especially fans of the French New Wave, such as myself. What I most dislike with the film is the American boy. Seen in many Hollywood films all the way back to Capra's days, focus is on a very shy (especially for his age, if he would be in his early teens I would find it more plausible) and insecure boy over 20 years of age, satisfied with his state of life - undesperate despite the fact that he has no friends, with a golden heart - the angel of good moral himself who has the right answers for everything, and then comes this beautiful girl and falls in love with him (the girl taking initiative and leading him all the steps to sex of course - well doesn't happen every day, I doubt it ever happens in real life), suddenly everyone starts to like him and he's a 'winner' in the end. Sort of a 'the kind nerd wins'. I just can't buy that anymore. But ok; this isn't a typical 'kind nerd wins' movie, but the those annoying elements were obvious, from the initial beginning to the end, when Matthew speaks about that they should "fight with brains - not guns".
Otherwise, we have a few pretty beautiful scenes photoed with colorful and sharp film, and the text intro and the last scene, that fades to black and white during Piaff's song (which fitted extremely well there), stand out. Apart from that the cinematography doesn't impress too much. The sound fits well. Garrel managed to satisfy my view of a typical Paris-1960 young man, frequently smoking. Could have been without the incest, made the movie aim for a little too much perhaps, although the combination of two men and a girl was successful. Eva Green was pretty good as well, I particularly liked her imitation from the Dietrich film. Also the Louvre-race is a treat.
I feel that Bertolucci missed something about Godard's highly intellectualism. This film is definitely on a lower level than Godard's films, regardless of epoque in his life. Very little classical music, art, quotes, philosophical material, poems...but on the other hand I guess that's not the intention of the film. The script is ok but not by any means impressive. A caleidoscope and nice treat for film buffs rather than a perfectly-framed masterpiece. Hopefully, it might also help introducing the New Wave to the modern audience.
7
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