Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye) and Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc) nearly get swept away in Jean-Luc Godard’s born-again film, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF
CinéSalon: EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF (SAUVE QUI PEUT [LA VIE]) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1980)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, June 16, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through July 28
212-355-6100
fiaf.org
In 1980, Jean-Luc Godard told journalist Jonathan Cott, “When you have a first love, a first experience, a first movie, once you’ve done it, you can’t repeat it,” the French auteur said about his latest film, Every Man for Himself, which he considered his “second first” film. “If it’s bad, it’s a repetition; if it’s good, it’s a spiral. It’s like when you return home — to mountains and lakes, in my case — you have a feeling of childhood, of beginning again. But in films, it’s very seldom that you have the opportunity to make your first film for the second time.” For Godard, whose real first film was 1960’s Breathless and who went on to make such other avant-garde masterworks as Contempt, Pierrot le Fou, Masculine Feminine, and Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Every Man for Himself might have been somewhat of a return to narrative, but only as Godard can do it. He still plays with form and various technological aspects, including a fascination with slow motion and an unusual, often very funny use of incidental music, and his manner of episodic storytelling would not exactly be called traditional. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad. Jacques Dutronc stars as mean-spirited, self-obsessed Swiss television director Paul Godard, who has recently broken up with his girlfriend, Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye), who wants to leave their apartment in the city for the idyllic greenery of the country. (Yes, the characters have such names as Godard and Rimbaud, and the voice of Marguerite Duras shows up.) Paul then meets a prostitute, Isabelle Rivière (Isabelle Huppert), who is interested in Paul and Denise’s apartment, planning on bettering her life even as she still must submit to the whims of her clients, including a businessman who orchestrates a strange orgy that would make Secretary’s James Spader proud.
The film is divided into four main sections, “The Imaginary,” “Fear,” “Commerce,” and “Music,” as the protagonists’ paths cross both thematically and, ultimately, physically. Among the motifs Godard explores are violence against women, incest, freedom, and choice, in addition, of course, to the art and craft of filmmaking itself. Along the way he pokes fun at commercialism, with numerous references to Marlboro (including a man who drives up to a gas station convenience store in a Formula One racecar sponsored by the cigarette brand) and Coca-Cola. Men don’t fare very well either; interestingly, while the U.S. title is Every Man for Himself, the film was released as Slow Motion in England, and the original French title, Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie), can be translated to colloquially mean “Run for your life!,” and that’s what you’d most likely do if you ever met any of these male characters in real life. (Godard has said that Save Your Ass would be a better translation.) Godard, who is credited with “composing” the film as opposed to directing it and wrote the screenplay with Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Claude Carrière, also makes frequent mention of anal sex and assholes, both literally and figuratively. “You happy?” one of Isabelle’s johns says to his imaginary wife in a hotel room. “That’s what you wanted, right?” “No,” a woman’s voice responds. “I wanted something else.” In Every Man for Himself, each character wants something else as they search through their most inner desires. The film looks and sounds dated today, very much a product of its time; add half a star if you think Godard can do no wrong, and delete a full star if Godard makes you want to bang your head against the wall. Nominated for three César Awards, for Best Director, Best Film, and Best Supporting Actress, which Baye won, Every Man for Himself is screening June 16 in the French Institute Alliance Française’s CinéSalon series “Jean-Claude Carrière: Writing the Impossible.” (The 7:30 show will be introduced by a special guest, and both the 4:00 and 7:30 shows will be followed by a wine reception.) The two-month festival consists of a wide range of films written by two-time Oscar winner Carrière, who, at eighty-three, is still hard at work. The series continues through July 28 with such other Carrière collaborations as Volker Schlöndorff’s Swann in Love, Andrzej Wajda’s Danton, and Louis Malle’s May Fools.