Far from his days as the hip director at the forefront of the French New Wave, for the better part of a few decades, Jean-Luc Godard has pretty much gone his own way. Hell, dude even gave the Academy the middle finger, essentially, turning down the Academy after they tried to give him an honorary Oscar a few years ago. But his adventurous spirit is still in full force, and the 82-year-old filmmaker has now embraced 3D, but of course, the results are not your average CGI explosion fest.
Rather, his first feature using the format is “Adieu Au Language” (“Goodbye To Language“) a movie that the director has previously described as being, “about a man and his wife who no longer speak the same language. The dog they take on walks then intervenes and speaks.” Heloise Godet, Zoe Bruneau, Kamel Abdelli, Richard Chevalier and Jessica Erickson star in the feature, and this 3-minute trailer is very…Godard-ian, highlighting his penchant for not sticking to any comfortable notions of structure and embracing crappy digital. Yes, this is NSFW due to some full frontal female nudity, but how this has managed to stay on YouTube while the latest Justin Timberlake video got yanked is a question we don’t have an answer for. Maybe Godard transcends all rules.
However, “Goodbye To Language” isn’t technically his first 3D effort, as this spring at Cannes the omnibus “3X3D” quietly closed the Cannes’ Critics’ Week. Featuring segments by Godard (“The Three Disasters“), Peter Greenaway (“Just In Time“) and Edgar Pera (“Cinesapiens”), the films are set in the Portuguese city of Guimaraes and are about the use and impact of 3D itself, so yeah, totally meta.
Anyway, check out both below. No release dates yet — Fox has the U.S. rights for “Goodbye To Language” but no word yet on stateside distributor for “3X3D.”