2 or 3 Things I Know About Her

Godard rejects his `all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun' theory in Two or Three Thing I Know About Her. The 'her' refers to Paris rather than the female protagonist and the only gun apparent is a toy that belongs to her son. The inspiration for the film came from an article on housewife prostitution. Godard consequently examined his theory that to live in Paris (in 1966) one had to prostitute oneself to survive. The narrative is shot through the eyes of Juliette (Marina Vlady), a Parisian housewife. She prostitutes herself weekly in the vain hope that she will be able to buy happiness and escape the high rise Parisian suburb where she lives with her husband and young son. Two or Three Things I Know About Her is a skillfully composed visual essay. It is an astounding collage of images that acknowledges the transformation of modern society into a technological monstrosity. As the principal strength of the French New Wave, Godard created a masterpiece that comes across as revolutionary and modernist over thirty years subsequent to its conception.

Although it was a critical success when it was released, and it still has strong supporters today, I personally found Two or Three Things I Know About Her a very weak film. It represents a day in the life of a prostitute/housewife, though that itself is difficult to tell. The film is rather amorphous. Maybe that's a word that many would use to describe the whole of Godard's films. But almost all of his other films, with the possible exception of Alphaville and Contempt (both of which I need to see again, having not seen them for a few years), have a little more internal structure and, what is especially missing from Two or Three Things, a pace. Other films of his are also more biting in their satire or drama, depending on what Godard is going for. Two or Three Things is dead in the water. Think of the giddy quickness and insanity of Pierrot le fou or Le Week-End, or the frightening images of Le petit soldat or Vivre sa vie. This film is not worthless, however. I've never seen a Godard film that I would call bad. And it is, like all of his films (I also haven't seen one that any fan should miss), important in his development as a director. You can see Le Week-End about to burst out of the screen. Two or Three Things contains a couple of remarkable scenes, including the coffee scene. Godard narrates in a whisper, philosophizing over his own role in the universe, as creme swirls in a cup of coffee and clusters of bubbles rotate and pop (the camera is so close that you can't see anything but the coffee in the cup). The cinematography in general, by Godard's frequent collaborator Raoul Coutard, is quite good. I especially like the shots of construction equipment, cranes and such. They're kind of like the opposite of Yasujiro Ozu's pillow shots. 6/10.

The title is a slightly ironic one; implying the importance of Godard as the film's personal narrator and ably illustrating that the "two or three things he knows about her" are referring not only to the film and the central character, but to Paris itself. It's one of the filmmaker's most difficult and disorientating films, existing within the same creative mindset as Week End (1967) and La Chinoise (1967), but failing to meet that particular level of subversive brilliance. Many of Godard's most obvious hallmarks are still in place, from the notion of society as prostitution, the rise of American consumerism, the state of France in the midst of political upheaval, relationships between men and women, the nature of cinema as a platform for discussion, satire, imagination and ideas, and the appropriation of a larger than life visual design taking in elements of pop art, surrealism, Buñuel and Brecht. However, unlike the similarly minded films aforementioned, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967) doesn't quite come together as a consistent and cohesive whole, instead seeming somewhat sluggish and anchored to a character that is neither interesting nor particularly well performed.

That said; I feel people shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the film, as it features several scenes of bold technical invention, a sharp and biting wit and a real sense of both visual and thematic imagination. It is also a fairly worthy time capsule to the spirit and scope of Paris at this particular time, expressing many of the political fears and social concerns central to most free-thinking Parisians circa 1967. Whereas the two other Politically minded films that Godard produced in 1967 would broaden the thematic scope to create a much more pointed attack on armchair terrorists and bourgeois revolutionaries, "2 or 3 Things" works on a much smaller scale; choosing suburban Paris with its high-rise apartment buildings, shops and service stations as a backdrop that is continually dwarfed by the wheels of industry and industrial repair. At one point Godard says in voice over that "the landscape is like a face", all the while showing how it is continually destroyed, changed and re-developed in a series of repetitive visual metaphors open to a variety of thematic interpretations. Many viewers take these sequences at face value and choose to view the film as a simple, heavy-handed essay on the decline of industry and the rise of Capitalism and subsequently write the film off. However, even though the film takes a great deal of work and may indeed seem boring and heavy-handed, there are deeper themes and ideas that make this a slightly more rewarding work in the long run.

Once again, Godard anchors his ideas to the theme of prostitution; recalling elements of Vivre sa Vie (1962) whilst simultaneously foreshadowing certain issues later expressed in Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980). Like the latter film, Godard implies that with an increasing focus on consumerism and the pursuit of material gain, society is prostituting itself. This is further elaborated upon by Godard's continual focus on product logos and brand names that are inter cut and often re-framed in order to create humorous puns that are probably lost on anyone not entirely familiar with the French language, as well as a final shot that renders the cityscape of suburban Paris as the ultimate consumer paradise. The idea of prostitution also extends to the main character, who here, prostitutes herself in order to break up the monotony of her everyday life, whilst also featuring as a somewhat controversial comment on acting itself (something that is further implied in the opening scene).

Like many of Godard's films, "2 or 3 Things" uses a great deal of humour to give the satire a more pointed attack. Much of this humour tends to go over the heads of most viewers, largely as a result of having to read the subtitles or simply missing out on much of Godard's clever use of wordplay and usually ironic puns. Scenes, such as the young boy relating his dream about the unification of North and South Vietnam, or the scene in which Juliet and her friend enact a bizarre, tongue-in-cheek sex game with a foreign war correspondent (who films them with a super 8 camera and looks a little like Godard himself), all the while cutting back and forth to shots of construction and cars entering a service station, being an incredibly bold and rebellious critique in itself. Other sections of the film seem more poetic; almost as if Godard is putting his thoughts on film as he goes along and creating something that is, on the one hand, entirely personal, whilst simultaneously being an obvious piece of satirical agitprop. The two strands don't always sit well together, and too often Godard's ideas seem strained and unformed; especially in comparison with those two other films from 1967, previously mentioned.

Obviously many viewers have had problems with the film, and really, your enjoyment of it will depend greatly on how much you trust Godard's instincts as both a satirist and filmmaker, and how willing you are to enter into a dialog with him on a subject that is now resigned to an incredibly brief footnote in 20th century history. For me, the film is undoubtedly one of his more difficult projects and not one that I would place higher than the likes of Le Mepris (1963), Pierrot le fou (1965) or Helas pour moi (1993), etc. However, the scope of Godard's ideas and his way of presenting them visually are close to genius, whilst the occasional moment of imaginative wit, visual poetry or the sheer verve of Godard's film-making abilities make the slow pace and poor performance from Marina Vlady all the more bearable. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is worth seeing in the context of both Week End and La Chinoise and is certainly worth experiencing as a double bill with the similarly themed Sauve qui peut (la vie).

Stagily whispered narration, more like idle gossip than full-blown conspiracy.

Non-sequiturial loose-ends of non-communication between the characters, and conversations between the actors and the director which we are not allowed to follow.

Uncommunicative and unengaged philosophico-political maunderings of citizens who are floundering conceptually in a system that cannot sustain them, either morally or intellectually.

A view of Parisian building-sites as a social upheaval which yet represents the antithesis of any structural or constructivist manifestation of social progress.

A film that is, like the capitalist society that has the eye of the camera hypnotised, a profoundly blank and alienating surface, whose technique is only occasionally relieved by gratuitous scenes of meaning:

E.g. -

A woman trapped in a sink estate and yearning to be free, who is compelled by the desparation of her dream to entrap and enslave herself even further through prostitution;

The intrusion of a pimp-like meter-reader into the pure nakedness of private space;

A creche in a brothel;

A secular catechesis - The simple, non-sexual, non-manipulative dialectic of honest exploration that makes us human;

The still-birth of revolutionary thought as the spiral galaxy in a coffee-cup ...

All-in-all, the representation of a society which is profoundly inhospitable to the human beings who should constitute it, and which consequently does not permit the realisation of any aspect of humanity.

All we get are fugitive glimpses of life in the process of moral and intellectual decay. Thought and character remains unrealised, and the film is therefore also inchoate as the necessary reflection of this social unreality.

Here is a wan world, haemmoraging meaning as we watch. Here before us are the helpless ghosts of an industrial medium. They dance fitfully in the unchanging wind, the fantastic commercial simulacra in which we bind our free nature.

Strips of film, strung out like human fly-paper, where fluttering images stick only as they die. In place of creative pressure, an air of ennui, of carelessness: A drop-out film - a film of drop-outs, plot-holes in the threadbare social fabric, - neglectful of all appearances. The face of the film gazes basilisk-like out upon the viewer, resentful of our settled habits of non-involvement. Two frozen gazes cancel, the mutual incomprehension only verging on hostile irritation. No reaction. No drama. The light dies.

The hypnotic mirror of reproach whose conscience we yearn to assuage, that traps our humanity in the voyeur's dream, as it is projected back upon us in the Gorgon's gaze.

Desire is petrified - one's petty film-going expectations of this penetration of dark places disappointed. One escapes from the deathly spell of cinema into the real world.

Godard's lesson is that there is nothing meaningful in this cave of artificial shadows, and that he will bitterly wean us from our facile consumerist dreams, that we may the better engage with the harsh political realities of life.

The radically disillusioned auteur deconstructs himself. Le derniere vague flops exhausted on that endless strip where empty sprocket-holes run on aimlessly towards a dying sun.

The mechanism of dreams runs down.

We are not automata - we are made up by life. To live is the story we enact, without intermediary, and unmediated. The immediate and the authentic are alien to art. Art is a whispering empty shell left high and dry. Life is not the element of dead things: Do not listen to the shallow siren voice of le faux vague! Plunge back into humanity's proper medium.

Thus does a revolution in seeing strip out the gelatinous scales of our burned-out eyes, and there is no more interference with the wavelengths of light being broadcast from the nearest star.

Thus do the sighing bones of life articulate the bounds of existence.

We are the tides that wax and wane - the ocean that overwhelms itself, drowning its own waves in one flood of being.

Godard's film and films are under the influence of this larger movement. With his work, we are cast adrift from all anchors and familiar landmarks. We are 'all at sea'. There is a transition - a movement that is perhaps nearer to momentum than inertia - from whence we cannot recall to whither we cannot see. His is the ultimate cinema of flux.

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (2 or 3 Things I know About Her) is one of Godard's most fluid and complex narratives, and that is saying much considering the very nature of most of Godard's work. On the surface, the "narrative" (if one were to call it that) concerns a group a middle/upper-middle class Parisian women who prostitute themselves in order to buy consumer goods. Based on a newspaper article Godard read, this "narrative" seems like an interesting point for gender politics.

However, "narrative" or gender politics are really not the point of "2 or 3 Things...". First off, "her" is less a person, but a city- Paris. And it is just not Paris, as in the city of romance and art, but De gaulle's radical transformation of Paris from a pre-war city of antiquity to a modern commercial center. The film is framed around extended shots of constructions sites, developing freeways, and cranes for a reason- to show how this ancient city is being radically transformed with or without the benefit of its citizens. In a way, this film is a meditation on a phenomena spreading around the world from the 1990's to the present (and especially the United States)- urban gentrification. In the push to modernize and beautify a city, the powers that be often step on the majority which make up a city- the lower and middle class. Godard's precise comments on urban planning are 40 years ahead of their time. If anything, "2 or 3 Things..." is far more relevant today than in 1967.

Secondly, the film is an agit-prop protest against crass commercialism and how it defaces and devoids the human experience. The 2 or 3 women in the film (Paris included) are so wrapped up in the base drive for material goods that they forget the very principles of humanity- love, caring for one's family, intellectual desire, and compassion. Godard's definition of consumerism robs a society of its metaphysical compassion and leads intellectual and personal freedom into a locked room. In the age of I-Pods and Paris Hilton, Godard's sharp criticism of crass consumerism is amazingly relevant. It is a wonder that the Adbusters/Culture jam movement have not latched onto this film with a passion.

"2 or 3 Things..." also serves as one of the many watermarks of Godard's highly productive and influential 1960's period- blending the emotions of Contempt or Vivre Sa Vie with the chic radicalism of La Chinoise or Week End. Godard was an artist in constant evolution in the 1960's and "2 or 3 Things..." is one of these many evolutionary steps.

Be forewarned, "2 or 3 Things..." is NOT a good starting point for those new to Godard. It is far too meditative, "slow", and didactic for one to get a true sense of Godard's radical style. I strongly recommend Masculine-Feminine, Contempt, Breathless, Band of Outsiders, or Week End as a better starting point for Godard. A newcomer to Godard's style might be forever turned off by the slow pacing of "2 or 3 Things...". However, after digesting a few of this great film maker's works, line up "2 or 3 Things...". A timeless and extremely relevant film.