Godard Biopic Le Redoutable Opens This Week.

Michel Hazanavicius’s unorthodox biopic of Jean-Luc Godard opens in the UK later this week, where it has thankfully avoided been renamed for marketing purposes (the film goes by the title of Godard Mon Amour in the US). The film stars Louis Garrel as the Swiss-Franco film director, and Stacy Martin as Anne Wiazemsky, Godard’s second wife, whose memoirs this production is based upon.

On hearing the news that the film was being made, its infamously surly subject is said to have exclaimed that it was a “stupid, stupid idea”, and third-party reviews have been somewhat tepid. Personally I’m torn about seeing it at all. I enjoyed The Artist a great deal on release, though not quite as much as some, and Hazanavicius’s follow-up, The Search, passed me by entirely (I don’t think it actually received a UK release. I did, however, enjoy the director’s earlier films, and this is an interesting enough period of Godard’s career to warrant a comedic examination. Indeed, it is often remarked that this political section of the filmmaker’s oeuvre is more interesting when looked at biographically, rather than in subjecting oneself to the films themselves.