Review: Le redoutable (aka Redoubtable)
Le redoutable focuses on the pivotal transitional period in the life of Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel), the legendary filmmaker who pioneered the Nouvelle Vague. The period is 1967 - 1968, nearly a decade after the shock of his audacious, rule-breaking À bout de souffle (Breathless), and Godard was respected the world over, revered by the likes of Jean Renoir and The Beatles. He was married and in love with nineteen-year-old Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin), whom he directed in La chinoise and Weekend and on whose memoir the film is based. Yet what is a revolutionary without a revolution? As France was undergoing its own civil unrest, Godard was himself in the midst of a sea change, soon to shed the easy, breezy impudence of his earlier work in favour of a more radical, politicised, and challenging approach.
Sentiments may not make revolutions, as Godard states at one point in the film, but revolutions don't make for happy marriages. Le redoutable has no issues casting Godard in a harsh and critical light. He sprayed venom at everyone in his path - critics, filmmakers, friends and, eventually, Anne. It begins amusingly enough, as evidenced by one of the film's many self-referential, fourth-wall-breaking winks. "I'm just pretending to be Godard," he retorts when Anne and their mutual friend Michèle (Bérénice Bejo) tell him to ignore the disappointing reviews of his latest film. "I'm an actor playing Godard. Not even a particularly good actor." Yet, by the time the film reaches the aftermath of the 1968 Cannes Film Festival which, metaphorically, seemed to be the straw that broke Godard's back, it is painfully clear that his hostility was untenable even for Anne, who no doubt adored him to the point of blindness. The scene in which she and about half a dozen passengers are stuck in a tiny car with the raving Godard is one of the highlights of the film, at once comically absurd and discomfitingly cringe-inducing.
More remarkable is a sequence in a darkened movie theatre as Godard and Anne exchange a whispered argument, edited in such a way that their words seem to be serving as the dialogue for Maria Falconetti and Antonin Artaud in La passion de Jeanne d'Arc. The film could have used more of these moments, which hark back to Godard's style without so obviously mimicking it. As he proved with his Oscar-winning tribute to silent cinema, The Artist, director Michel Hazanavicius certainly knows his way around pastiche cinema and so for fans of Godard and cinema in general, Le redoutable may be enjoyable fun, so loaded is it with visual and stylistic references to many of Godard's work. Yet the whole enterprise feels too staged and deliberate and so the film ends up being more style over substance. Compare that with Phantom Thread, which explores the same themes and pays homage to the likes of Hitchcock, Renoir and Ophuls without sacrificing its own identity.
Le redoutable (aka Redoubtable)
Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius
Written by: Michel Hazanavicius; based on the memoir Un an après by Anne Wiazemsky
Starring: Louis Garrel, Stacy Martin, Bérénice Bejo, Micha Lescot, Grégory Gadebois, Guido Caprino
