ELOGE DE L’AMOUR

8/10

In Praise of Love : France 2001
director : Jean-Luc Godard
lead actors : Bruno Putzulu, Cecile Camp, Jean Davy
98 minutes

Watching Godard’s first UK release in fifteen years is like eating a bizarre meal cooked by a legendary chef. The menu is gibberish, and you suspect that some of what’s being served may not be what’s usually called ‘food’ at all… but who cares, if it tastes this good? The first hour, shot on luminous black-and-white film, features an earnest intellectual (Putzulu) casting for a movie project in Paris. Godard then switches to gaudy video: it’s two years before, and our hero lurks in a coastal village observing an old couple as they negotiate the sale of their life story to ‘Spielberg Associates.’ Laugh-out-loud funny, blindingly beautiful and punk as f*ck, Eloge is, in its own way, as spectacular as Lord of the Rings and, probably, just as meaningless. Bravo, all the same.