Godard Special: The Sublime/Sexy Era

“Beauty is only the start of bearable terror”. These lines are uttered, by Jean-Luc Godard himself, in 1983’s Prenom Carmen. Wild of hair, cigar to his lips. A Delphic oracle treading a tightrope between madness and cinema. In the years between 1983 and 1993, Godard turned his camera away from the screeching confections of his revolutionary period, and began to ask bigger and more transcendent questions. Like God. Like the relationship of man and woman. Like love (be it blue-balled or consummated). Languid, soft, graceful. On the surface, these films - Prénom Carmen (1983), Hail Mary/Je vous salue, Marie (1985), and Hélas pour Moi (1993) - look more like film-films; proper ‘arthouse’ stuff. And people have a tendency to disregard them because of this. Hitting middle age, what was Godard really aiming at? And does this period of his prolific filmmaking career still carry the banner of his earliest and most well remembered films? Naturally, Owen and Ralph take up the task of finding out.