In Praise of Love

Witty, contemplative, and sublimely beautiful.

Godard has always made films that are as thrilling for their ideas and ideals as for the sheer beauty of their images; the difference here is that for the first time in years he's more interested in turning us on than in turning us off.

For all its bile and incoherence, In Praise of Love is filled with haunting images and insights. Godard may be a lion in winter, but the lion still roars.

Rarely does an established filmmaker so ardently waste viewers' time with a gobbler like this -- it's pretty shocking that this thing isn't even artsy. Barring a few brief moments of instantaneously fizzling inspiration, it's merely fartsy.

Godard, as always, sounds full of insight, yet he uses the past to damn the present in a way that may be reflexively self-serving. In Praise of Love leaves a taste as bitter as poison ash.

In my own very humble opinion, In Praise of Love lacks even the most fragmented charms I have found in almost all of his previous works. [9 Sep 2002, p.25]

I see so little there: It is all remembered rote work, used to conceal old tricks, facile name-calling, the loss of hope, and emptiness.