The idea of Jean-Luc Godard, king of the Nouveau Vague, getting a biopic was one that was always going to raise the hackles of cinephiles. The idea that that biopic would come from Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist,” a movie much-shat upon by the Film Twitterati, practically felt like it would cause riots in the street.
To be fair, after Hazanavicius’ last film, the utterly awful, and barely-released-in-the-U.S. “The Search,” we’re sort of on their side. But while we might not have given “The Artist” an Oscar ourselves, it was, before it became an awards monster, a perfectly sweet and charming film steeped in cinephilia, and while Godard and Hazanavicius might seem like a mismatched pair, we’re sort of intrigued to see how it turns out.
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The film will be bowing in competition at Cannes in a few weeks, and Indiewire have debuted a new teaser trailer to celebrate (the first was a month or two back), one that shows a pleasing sense of humor about the whole thing. It’s mostly made up of a single scene, as Godard (Louis Garrel), marching with his wife Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) at a protest, introduces a friend, Michel Cournot (“Les Gauloises bleues”), to a comrade, only to be mocked when he’s told that Cournot’s film will be premiering at Cannes. “That’s ridiculous. Who cares about Cannes? Only a fool would go this year, with all that’s going on now.”
It seems like Hazanavicius isn’t going to be afraid to mock the hand that selected him for Official Competition, or play up to contemporary parallels at a festival that will follow the election in France with a fascist candidate, Marine Le Pen, running for the presidency. Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised by this, and you can watch it below: check back some time after May 17th for our verdict from Cannes.
