Numéro deux

Depicting an "alienated" French family on video monitors that

swim in a black void, Godard creates a kind of mystical proletarian

naturalism that carroms against strange folkloric proverbs, surreal

interaction played utterly flat, and a quiescent sexual explicitness

that has the calm uninflection of hardcore pornography. At first it

seems like a Franz Xaver Kroetz play on a video monitor (which

gives it an occult-like power); then the family goes on to take on the

primal, iconic qualities of a Henry Moore family group. An

exploration of the hidden properties of the image, and the

global-scale forces that (in Godard's view) pull all the strings of our

intimate lives, NUMERO DEUX ranks with Godard's greatest work.

Not even the finest of his later work has the immense force,

striking simplicity or blinding insight of this picture.