So it turns out we’re far from done with the films of the French New Wave and this one was a specific recommendation from our cinephile friend. Though this isn’t as incomprehensible as Adieu au Langage, this is easily the craziest of the films we’ve seen yet by Jean-Luc Godard.

Roland and Corinne are a couple who live in the city and are heading out the countryside over the weekend. Corinne’s parents are rich and the couple have been lusting their money for years. They expect Corinne’s father to die over the weekend and so hurry to get to their countryside house for fear that the mother will change the will. Getting there however turns out to be an epic endeavor as the roads are depicted as being an apocalyptic wasteland plagued by an interminable traffic jam and littered with car wrecks and dead bodies. At one point, their car is even hijacked by a gun-wielding man who insists that he is God and inevitably their own car is destroyed in an accident. Forced to travel on foot, the couple end up walking for days and meet a succession of decidedly odd individuals on the road while scavenging for supplies from car wrecks. These strange people vary greatly but all too often are eager to speak at length about art, philosophy or politics, which bores or annoys the couple.

The films opens conventionally if a tad dramatically with the couple talking about their trip while looking down on an argument over a car accident that escalates. But the impassive manner with which they regard the fight hints at the brutal, cynical manner in which this film regards the world. The main story is really only a very loose framework and the film is best seen as a collection of individual scenes which stand or fall based on their own merits. The first of these for example has Corinne recount to Roland a sexual encounter that she had with a friend. The intent seems to be to create an intense, erotically charge atmosphere through dialogue alone and in this Godard succeeds masterfully but it has little to do with anything else. Soon after that the scene about a traffic jam that becomes increasingly absurd feels like it could belong in a Stephen Chow movie. I love how the camera keep tricking you that this finally is the cause of the blockage, a car wreck, a long bus, a boat being towed by a car, even a llama in a cart behind a truck, but it keeps turning out to be a false hope in a single, uncut long shot that just keeps going on and on and on.

Not every scene worked for me. I couldn’t grasp the significance of their encounter with a pianist except maybe that it’s a technical exercise as a long, tracking shot with a camera that moves along a circular path. Some jokes are a bit stale and too on the nose such as when the couple’s car is destroyed and the only thing Corinne is distressed about is her Hermès bag. Most of the jokes and gags are fantastic however such as the group of rebels that they encounter being called the Seine-et-Oise Liberation Front which is extra funny as this was a French département that was abolished due to being subsumed into greater Paris. Plus of course how could I not love the nods to other French films. They meet multiple rebellious couples, a standard trope of the French New Wave, and the singing man in the telephone booth could only be a reference to Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, released three years prior. Another recurring joke is that the couple are well aware that they are inside a film, and so complain that they only meet weirdos. At one point, they even become upset at another couple who have walked out of a novel instead.

One thing I’m not sure I’m a fan of is the film’s ending which features plenty of gore and animal abuse that looks real. The tone is different from the rest of the film and Godard’s intent seems to be to capture the horror of the September Massacres of the French Revolution. It’s shocking which is the intent but I’m uncomfortable with how real animals were seemingly harmed and it feels like carrying the joke a bit too far. Overall however this is one of my favorites of Godard so far and a perfect example of a film that is simply brimming over with pure creativity. Watching it was a delightful experience.