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.
