In Praise of Love

Like most Godard, it can be watched repeatedly, always yielding new secrets and beauties. Most profound of all, perhaps, are those incredible black-and-white images of Paris. Read full review

An elusive and profoundly moving essay about the stages of amour and of age. Like the best of Godard's movies -- and I haven't been sucked into one since "Passion" (1982) -- it is visually ravishing, penetrating, impenetrable. Read full review

Witty, contemplative, and sublimely beautiful. Read full review

In Praise of Love has virtually no plot, no characters and is not about love, and there is precious little praise in it. It's an essay in film, and it's not always consistent in that: You'll never quite know what he's trying to say. But the film remains great because of the way he says it. Memorable images and dialogue worm their way into your psyche and won't let go. [18 Oct 2002, p.8P]

In its formal daring and exquisite style, the movie is itself an act of resistance against what Godard sees as a modern triumphalist culture that turns historical truth to lies and love to images created to make money. Read full review

I don't pretend to understand a darned thing about Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love...But it's undeniably powerful and, if you're up for the experience, exhilarating. Read full review

Godard has always made films that are as thrilling for their ideas and ideals as for the sheer beauty of their images; the difference here is that for the first time in years he's more interested in turning us on than in turning us off. Read full review

A sustained immersion in gorgeously austere street photography and casual portraiture, the images punctuated by bits of black leader and gnomic intertitles, the action propelled by sweetly pulverized music and an effortlessly layered soundtrack of enigmatic conversations. Poetry is really the only word for it. Read full review

This is a twilight film, full of sorrow yet lyrical, beautiful, and dark. Read full review

Think of it as the rantings of a grouchy old man (he's 71) who for half a century has resisted all efforts to dumb down his movies, insisting instead on making them HIS way and no other. Read full review

For all its bile and incoherence, In Praise of Love is filled with haunting images and insights. Godard may be a lion in winter, but the lion still roars. Read full review

A film that has unusual expectations from its audience -- and that's a welcome relief. Read full review

Rarely does an established filmmaker so ardently waste viewers' time with a gobbler like this -- it's pretty shocking that this thing isn't even artsy. Barring a few brief moments of instantaneously fizzling inspiration, it's merely fartsy. Read full review

Brimming with ideas, aphorisms, diatribes, film clips and even bits of a story, the film's a gorgeous muddle that somehow manages to leave one both baffled and deeply satisfied. Read full review

The film offers a frequently obscure but (for fans) always watchable look at history, memory and -- in the most rarefied sense -- love. Read full review

To my eyes, the whole thing past in a blur of fabulous collage. [2 September 2002, p. 152]

Its gloomy speculations on the ephemeral nature of art are paradoxically not easily forgotten, and Godard's daring again pays off, or at least comes close enough to get credit for trying. Read full review

Godard's artistry -- the way his scenes are at once archly stylized and informal, the quick precision of his eye -- is unarguable. But the beautiful images and solemn words cannot disguise the slack complacency of his vision. Read full review

The problem with In Praise of Love is not that it seems to be possessed by a kind of free floating anti-Americanism. I'm not all that crazy about some of the things this country does, either, and I detest some of the big-budget movies Hollywood makes. The problem with In Praise of Love is that it never shuts up. [1 Nov 2002, p.E4]

Gives no indication that Jean-Luc Godard has anything left to say that is worth hearing, no indication that he has any drive or passion to continue making movies. What's on the screen is habit -- accomplished, rote, empty. Read full review

At one point in ''Praise,'' Godard mentions that the Bois de Boulogne, the Parisian park, is all that's left of the French forests from the time of the Roman conquest. In Praise of Love, glowing like an ember, is all that's left of genius. Read full review

Godard, as always, sounds full of insight, yet he uses the past to damn the present in a way that may be reflexively self-serving. In Praise of Love leaves a taste as bitter as poison ash. Read full review

It's a diary, collage, meditation, elegy. But, unless you're going for a Ph.D. in code-breaking, it's also a bore. Read full review

The bitterness of the film is a far cry from the peppy young Godard's embrace of life -- and a very far cry indeed from either praise or love. Read full review

I found myself staring at his new one, In Praise of Love (Éloge de l'Amour), in a state of rapt annoyance and befuddlement. It's constructed in two sections, which are far more fractured and opaque than the simple description I will here try to set out. Read full review

A sniveling diatribe from a great director beginning to resemble someone's senile grandfather. Read full review

In my own very humble opinion, In Praise of Love lacks even the most fragmented charms I have found in almost all of his previous works. [9 Sep 2002, p.25]

In all honesty I'd advise you to go rent the stunning (and brand-new) DVD of the director's great "Le Mépris (Contempt)," which seems to me to be much more Godardian and much less hopeless. Read full review

Maybe the easiest thing would be to skip the movie altogether. Godard has created such a hermetic, uncompromising world that only the hardiest cinematic spelunkers are likely to appreciate its depths. Read full review

I see so little there: It is all remembered rote work, used to conceal old tricks, facile name-calling, the loss of hope, and emptiness. Read full review

Not only does the fragmented delivery become trying, but also the behind-the-camera dialogue and city shots with heavy Parisian traffic numb the senses. And as beautiful as it looks, there's really nothing new coming out of the lens of the revered Godard. Read full review