French New Wave@GoMA

Rather fortuitously, the Gallery of Modern Art, itself new to Brisbane, had a French New Wave retrospective when I lived there last year. There were the better known directors – Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer - but I also caught Varda, Malle and Rivette’s work as well as the new new wave, Dumont & Garrel. All in all, it was a fairly comprehensive retrospective (with the odd glitch which meant I missed Chabrol’s The Good Girls), even more so if you consider that most of the films are not available on DVD. Further, it was the first time I had indulged in serious film-viewing (bar when Akashvani screened a lot of arthouse cinema in Mumbai in the 80s) – it’s an entirely different experience to going to the cinemas or watching a film on DVD. So much so that I am still on the lookout for a film club or catch the odd feature at AGNSW – it’s the best way to view serious cinema. Also, one of the pleasures of the retrospective was how particularly successful the films as a whole were in evoking the Paris of the 50s (and most of the films were set in Paris).

The biggest disappointment for me was Godard's work, though I think this has to much to do with the fact that I am in my 40s. No doubt I would have adored it when I was younger – Godard is particularly successful in capturing the zeitgeist of youth, it was not surprising that the average age of viewers at the retrospective was consistently lower at a Godard screening. Godard is also the film-maker’s film-maker. His idiom is still fresh, one can sense its influence on much that is made today. However, whilst the more accessible films like Bande à Part were charming enough, more serious work like The Little Soldier was particularly adolescent in its political views (a viewpoint which might not be shared by all) and even Vivre Sa Vie left me a little cold bar the section on statistics on “fallen women” in Paris and the long philosophical discussion which Nana engages in. The endless referencing of popular culture also gets tiresome after awhile and not necessarily because its common these days. And of course there is the misogyny of the films. Similarly Truffaut is something of a one note film-maker and the high points remain 400 Blows and Jules et Jim, which I had seen earlier. Rohmer also makes similar films; nevertheless I quite liked his earlier shorts that were screened at the retrospective.

The most interesting films at the retrospective were Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur and Jacques Rivette’s Mad Love, both of which I shall post on later.

Of the new new wave Philippe Garrel’s Regular Lovers, a bittersweet postcard to May 1968 although a bit tedious and self-indulgent had its moments, helped along by two attractive leads. Although I am no film student, I felt that Garrel’s film was an attempt at pure cinema and it does succeed quite well in that. For all its faults - its almost intolerably long length and the seeming inability of Garrel to edit as well as to bring to his subject matter an unsparing sentimentality - the movie is salvaged by being deeply personal and intensely poetic as well as having some of the most beautiful images that I have seen in recent cinema.