"Every thought contains the debris of a smile."

paraphrase, _In Praise of Love_

I haven't seen _Eloge de l'amour_, one of my favorite Godard
films, in more than a decade. It would have been among his
most elegiac work under any circumstances, but is particularly
poignant the week he dies of assisted suicide, like the heroine
of the film Berthe (Cecile Camp) does. It touches on war-time
atrocities committed by Serbs against Kosovo, just as news
breaks of more mass graves and evidence of torture in Ukraine.
Aphorisms, epigrams, and startling images distinguish _In Praise
of Love_ as in so many late period Godard films, but they feel
especially well-earned in this deeply emotional story; these are
organic to the characters, rooted in an unusually dense texture
of themes and lived stories.

The first two thirds of the film, shot in B&W, find Edgar (Bruno
Putzulu) planning and casting a project which could be a novel,
film, play, opera, cantata ... He is vague about the form but
wishes to trace the stages of love through the experiences through
youth, adulthood, and old-age; the middle stanza has so far
eluded his grasp. He is haunted by Berthe, whom he has once met
in Brittany; perhaps her mercurial mind and acid tongue embody an
ideal of that elusive Adulthood? Once an artist up north, she
has been working as a cleaning lady to care for her son. Still
full of fire and just as opinionated, she rejects a role in his
project. Later on Edgar finds out from his circle of friends,
financiers, and associates that she has died. The last third
of the film loops back to their initial meeting in Brittany, where
her family -- part of the French Resistance in WWII -- sells their
war time exploits to "Spielberg Associates." It is supposed to
star Juliette Binoche, and adapted by William Styron (the author
of _Sophie's Choice_). This haunting, heart-breaking finale
is shot in startling over-saturated colors using digital video,
as if to emphasize Berthe's life-force has ignited his imagination.
We learn that almost all the phrases and epigrams percolating in
Edgar's head have come from Berthe and her grandfather. (He
opines that the Resistance has its youth and old-age, but no
adulthood, anticipating what Edgar attributes to Love.)

The film's reverse chronology is like Harold Pinter's _Betrayal_,
although the betrayal is of a spiritual rather than carnal kind:
Edgar's lack of conviction, the aging Resistance Fighters' selling
out to the Americans, the art-world's lack of funding to fend off
Hollywood's $50,000, fancy cars, helicopters. The film is
criticized for its alleged anti-Americanism, for claiming that the
US has neither a name nor a history and resorts to buying up
foreign tales*. I think the film is equally critical of old Europe,
which has become calcified and resistant to changes, much like the
old folks in Edgar's amorphous project. the US is Edgar's Youth who
looks to the future at the expense of the past. As for Berthe's
criticism that the US doesn't even have a proper name -- Edgar
professes he doesn't know her name, either. (Ihe imdb credits list
her character as just "Elle.") He proceeds to blame her for the
collapse of his plans, sullying her memory with a snide "she
is no Berthe Morisot." Edgar is likely a stand-in for Godard
himself, searching for an artistic/spiritual path forward, perhaps
unlike Terrence Malick after _The New World_. In that sense, _In
Praise of Love_ is an earnset autocritique; Godard seems to
generously acknowledge, as Edgar doesn't, that his inspirations
have mostly come from collaborators and muses (whom he was known
to badly mistreat). At no point do I get the impression the
director has all the answers in _In Praise of Love_.

The stunning final third of the film perhaps hints at the way
forward: an exalted, intense, new way to look, live, love, create art.
The scenic Brittany beaches, rocks, and sail boats are photographed
like impressionism in motion, and echo Monet's colorful paintings
sketched in Brittany. The superpositions of the back of Edgar's
head with digital landscapes become surrealist portraits, Dali
and Miro. The use of mostly static cameras underscores the oil
painting analogy. Godard eschews the video camera's mobility and
mounts it exactly the same static way as in the B&W scenes. The
exceptions are the car sequence, where street lamps and neon
signs blur like halos in van Gogh's "Starry Night."

What part does he has in mind for the contrarian Berthe? Is it
Eglantine, played by the striking Audrey Klebaner? (For such a
Proustian name, the literary references seem to be all Anglo-Saxon,
_Canterbury Tales_ and so on.) Or is it a female Perceval, the
quixotic knight who seeks the Holy Grail? Guinevere, Morgan, Merlin?
Godard names check Bresson, who made _Lancelot of the Lake_, so it
is hard to avoid the Arthurian legend. The film also has a copy
of _Situations_ by that other questing knight (Sartre) in prominent
display. Perhaps that is meant to say (bearing in mind I am hardly
a Godard specialist) that the film has found adulthood after all? It
is no state of grace, an immovable legend, but is a freedom to which
the artist is condemned, an inevitable quicksand patch of indecision,
regrets, haunted memories. Even if the adult artist happens to be
the genius whose _In Praise of Love_ has changed the way we watch
movies, the way we live.

(for A.)

*My two favorite cities in Northern America are Manhattan and
Montreal. Almost every street corner in Montreal Old Town has
plaques and statues that celebrate its 400 year evolution; two
History Musuems compete for visitors side-by-side. New York,
which has almost as rich a past, seems too busy remaking itself
to bother. Objectively, Godard's observation certainly passes
the eye test.