First Name: Carmen

Here are the bare bones of the story: Carmen wants to make a film with her friends, but has no money. The gang tries to stage an armed bank robbery, but runs into fierce opposition from Joseph, a guard. Carmen and Joseph flee together to the coast, where they stay in her Uncle Jean's apartment. Jean (Godard himself) is making a film set in a luxury hotel, but this is just a pretext for a kidnapping attempt on a businessman. From here on, the plot follows the Bizet opera beloved of so many of us.

It's fun to watch Godard working out styles and themes again, while acting outrageously in the hospital scene. Maruschka Detmers looks gorgeous, and Jacques Bonnaffe is suitably ardent and foolish. The bank robbery is worthy of Woody Allen in his best days.

Footnote 2014: I see that I neglected to mention the extraordinary camera work in the hotel sequences. How Coutard managed to get that level of intimacy and richness of colour with the light levels so low near sunset is amazing. Detmers manages to cope with Godard's need to sexualize the story very well--she is excellent.

I found it very interesting to see a new, different movie made out of an old story (Carmen). It is not easy to follow Godard and hence it may take several views of the films to understand all details including plot, dialogues and philosophical remarks and the result is it makes you reflect about it and makes you become an actively involved viewer. A Godard movie is like modern art introducing new standards in story telling, and so for someone used to and expecting a scheme F Hollywood entertainment movie it is probably a frustrating experience. I found the actors did a good job. I think the nakedness of the lead actress relates to the kind of relationship she (Carmen) has with her lover, which is based on a strong sexual, magnetic and obsessive attraction. I found the cinematographic/photographic work of the movie very beautiful and the music fits nicely in.

Carmen is a member of a terrorist gang who falls in love with a young police officer guarding a bank that she and her cohorts try to rob. She leads him on while dragging the two of them closer to their ultimate doom.

What the average viewer will take away from this film is the excessive nudity, both male and female. There is a shower scene that is hard to forget, because it is both perverse and terribly sad. I can only imagine how hard this film would have been to get into American theaters.

The moment you really know this film is bonkers, however, involves a store bathroom. A man, a woman, a urinal, and another man... and a jar of baby food. Now, for the rest of my life, I can say (for good or bad) Godard has changed the way I look at cinema.

I've seen this once, which isn't really enough, but I found it the most sheerly enjoyable of Godard's later works.

A kaleidescopic updating and deconstruction of the "Carmen" story, it's "Carmen", it's "Last Tango in Paris", it's a girl and a gun, it's the Keystone Kops, it gives us Godard as randy old pervert and it's informed throughout by Beethoven's beautiful late string quartets, which this film made me start listening to. It's also screamingly funny.

I will admit to understanding about a tenth of this and Godard's later work is so personal that it's probably futile to hope that everything will become clear, but I shall see this again as soon as I get the chance. Hal Hartley (and Tarantino) eat your heart out....

Maruschka is taking her kit off in almost every scene, one almost doubts Godard's intentions. The film starts off on a self deprecatory note with Godard playing himself as a film director hospitalized with an unstable mind. A seemingly ordinary storyline takes on strange hues with its disjointed narrative and its treatment of certain scenes. The bank holdup is seen with a cynical eye which lends the whole scene farcical.An oddity in world cinema, best appreciated by film historians and buffs.