Adieu au Langage is the latest film by renowned French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. Even the fact that he’s still making films at the age of 85 is impressive. We’d watched his first and most famous film, Breathless, a while back and liked it but nothing else. This one however is a whole other level of obscurity and it’s hard to say what we got out of it.

This is actually an experimental project that integrates the use of innovative 3D techniques as part of the experience. I wasn’t aware of this at first and anyway it’s pretty impossible to find a 3D viewing of this in Malaysia so I just watched the regular 2D version. As such, we obviously missed out on a lot of the meaning that the director intended to convey, so that it’s even harder to understand what this film is about. All my wife and I got was that there’s a couple who interacts with each other in an apartment, a dog and a shooting of some kind. As it turns out, there are actually two couples with the performers being deliberately chosen to physically resemble one another.

Still, even though most of the film went over our heads, there are still bits that I liked.  As a pure visual spectacle, this is certainly an impressive piece of work. I like how Goddard can shoot some scenes that are technically flawless and absolutely beautiful, like the ship floating on the perfectly blue sea just to show that he can, then intersperse it with low quality shots to prove a point. I also liked how the scenes in the apartment are shot with plenty of nudity, yet don’t feel sexualized at all. The shot that felt the most sexualized to me is that of a woman putting her clothes on with the light behind her. Then of course there are the scenes that my wife guessed must be meant to represent the dog’s point of view. Coincidentally, I had just looked up the subject of dog vision a few days before and mentioned that dogs have only dichromatic vision, instead of trichromatic vision in humans. It seems that Goddard was deliberately trying to create this effect.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this film and we must confess that we were both glad that this is only an hour long. Any longer and it would likely be very tiresome to watch. I’m not even sure what to make of the philosophical references in this film are. I suspect that Goddard is serious about the musings here but the effect of the film to me seems to actually make light of them. It’s undeniable that watching this is a unique experience unlike any other and that it’s a carefully and deliberately crafted work of art, so it was still a worthwhile experience for me.