Masculin feminin = Masculine Feminine

How do girls talk to boys? What do boys want? This movie is a snap-shot of relationships between young people in the France of the mid-1960s, and though rooted firmly in time and place, it also resonates with the perpetual struggle between the sexes to come to an understanding of each other. Jean-Pierre Leaud is Paul, a young man who in between being a poet revolutionary is trying to work out which woman he really loves. This is the skeletal plot of “Masculin Feminin”, loosely based on the Guy de Maupassant short story, “La Femme de Paul and Le Signe”. However, the film Godard finished can lay claim to being one of the most influential works of cinema, a dazzling combination of verite reportage, Brechtian drama, and audacious editing and assemblage. Still exciting, still riveting, still poignant and satiric in its commentary on sex and love, this film still justifies critic Richard Roud’s claim that with “Masculin Feminin” Godard “succeeded in creating a new kind of cinema.” This bittersweet celebration of youth still feels fresh, it still excites. In French with English subtitles.