GamerTab That was an excellent one.

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Antonius Block Smart, philosophical, cool, sexy, playful, subversive, and perfect to the time period – I just loved 'Masculin Feminin'. There is an indie, impromptu feeling to the film, which is told in chapters, and includes beautiful Parisian street scenes, thought-provoking quotes, and great performances from Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya, as well as the supporting cast. It's said that director Jean-Luc Godard didn't have an actual script, and instead used hand-written notes he would come up with the night before. While that could have led to disorganized chaos, here it works, and brilliantly. Sometimes heard with street noise in the background, the dialogue seems natural even when it's provocative, or when characters are in sequences that are essentially interviews. It's not a linear, simple story and that may put some viewers off, but if you think about it, along the way Godard touches on love, sex, homosexuality, politics, the antiwar movement, violence, race relations, pop culture, and of course, the youth of 1960's France, saying a lot in this film. There are surreal elements, and hey, you even get a cameo from Brigitte Bardot. Very entertaining, and on a number of levels.Quotes: "If you kill a man, you're a murderer. If you kill millions of men, you're a conqueror. If you kill them all, you're God.""We went to the movies often. The screen would light up, and we'd feel a thrill. But Madeline and I were usually disappointed. But Madeline and I were usually disappointed. The images were dated and jumpy. Marilyn Monroe had aged badly. We felt sad. It wasn't the movie of our dreams. It wasn't the total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we would have liked to make, or more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live."Madeleine: Do you think one can live alone? Always alone. Paul: No, I don't think one can, it's impossible. Without tenderness you'd shoot yourself."We can suppose that, 20 years from now, every citizen will wear a small electrical device that can arouse the body to pleasure and sexual satisfaction."

TrappedInTheCinema By 1966, Jean-Luc Godard had established himself at the forefront of the French New Wave. Cinematically, he was experimenting with revolutionary techniques and politically, his films were in touch with the upsurge of youth revolution sweeping the country. To this day, many of the films he made in his first six years can be reeled off by even the laxest of cinephiles: À bout de soufflé (1960), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Mépris (1963), Bande À Part (1964), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot Le Fou (1965), and others. Masculin Féminin fits very much in this revolutionary lineage.It follows a small group of young Parisians, variously focused on Marxism and pop music. In particular, the film focuses on Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud), his existential musings on life (e.g. wondering if he is the centre of the universe), his radical politics, and his romance with an up-and coming pop-star.Masculin Féminin has many of tropes typical of Godard during this era. In the opening scene, there is a shooting outside a café. But it is ignored, as it isn't relevant to our characters – Godard is only showing us want he wants us to see. Similarly, the background noise in the film comes and goes – we hear it only if Godard wants us to. During conversations, the camera remains steadfast, vérité- style, on one character.There are other signs that are unmistakably Godard: the self- referentiality (a character mentions Pierrot Le Fou, his previous film); the giant capital letter inter-titles that appear with Western-style gunshots on screen. One of these inter-titles says "This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola" – revolutionary politics and American culture feature heavily throughout.The revolutionary atmosphere very much matched Godard's own views of this time, and can be seen again in films such as Week-End (1967). He was making films that were riding a wave of passion on the streets; films that were incredibly relevant, if not ahead of their time. At their best, Godard's films capture this energy and pace. The pop soundtrack helps this pace along, as we ride a culture crest of a wave.On these grounds, there is much to acclaim Masculin Féminin for.However, there are issues with the sexual politics of the film, and particularly with the central character of Paul. Trying to charm a woman he says, "I really like your kind of breasts. It matters." He also shouts sexual comments at passing women and concocts ways to stare at a woman's cleavage in a café.Yet he is a politically active individual, a Marxist with a strong sense of right and wrong. But he cannot see his views and actions towards women being so vile. It is possible – nay, likely – that Godard has written this chauvinism into the script purposefully under the guise of satire. Godard's anti-American sentiment appears to be blaming American and British popular culture for infecting France with this attitude. (There are shout-outs to James Bond, The Beatles and even Sandie Shaw in the film).But sadly we can never escape the chauvinism itself, or the strong sense that Godard associates with Paul. When Paul defaces an American embassy car, Godard would have been cheering from behind the camera.The female members in the group – Madeleine (Chantal Goya), Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport) and Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert) – have been fantastically developed in the writing, with performances to match. Some of the greatest moments of the film come in the scenes between Paul and Madeleine, when their romance feels at its most real: the tenderness when lying in bed together (albeit with a third person); and his pain when Madeleine walks off and leaves him alone in a bar. Madeleine, and Chantal Goya's performance, has brought out a side in Paul the audience can relate to.But sadly too often the two men of the group are arseholes with gut- wrenching chauvinism, and the apparent adoration from behind the camera only exacerbates this.I do not wish to take away or detract from what is great, inventive or revolutionary about Masculin Féminin. But the sexism, which all too often surfaces, prevents it from being the first Godard film to unequivocally capture me.

Christopher Culver In MASCULIN FEMININ, shot in the autumn of 1965, Jean-Luc Godard studies the perennial features of courtship and dating between young men and young women, and the particular way they worked out in the newly permissive and economically booming society of 1960s France. Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is 21 and has just finished his national service. In a café, he strikes up a conversation with Madeleine (Chantal Goya), a friend of a friend, with the pretext that she might help him find work. They start dating, and the film then tracks their rocky relationship, where Paul is frustrated as the sole man among Madeleine and her flatmates/girlfriends Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert) and Catherine-Isabelle (Catherine-Isabelle Duport). He occasionally meets up with his chum Robert (Michel Debord), just as young but already a passionate union activist.But really, this is a lot more than a study in boy meets girl. Godard gives us a whole bucket of 1960s social, political, and cultural themes. Paul and Robert are both passionate members of the French Left, while the girls are more interested in the other side of the ideological divide, namely consumer society (pop music, clothes, cars). Their conversations reveal Godard's own unease at how the world was developing in the 1960s, his fears of political repression, dizzying technological progress, and a working class who had no time to enjoy all the stuff it could now buy. At several points in the film, the main characters overhear conversations in public places that are completely over-the-top in terms of sex and violence, but which reveal some of the tensions in society.In fact, in one of the film's most striking scenes, Godard without warning has Leáud interview a real young woman (Elsa Leroy) who had recently won a fashion magazine's "girl of the year" award, asking her about politics, war, and what she wants from life. In this six-minute scene where only she is visible on camera, clearly put on the spot, she seems totally oblivious to the war in Vietnam and other great issues of the day. Your reviewer is quite a passionate armchair historian about 1960s youth culture in Europe, and like many other books and films, MASCULIN FEMININ shows that many of the issues of the day are still very relevant for us in the new millennium.For this film, Godard's usual cameraman Raoul Coutard was unavailable, so he brought in Willy Kurant. While the two reportedly quarreled during the production, Kurant pulls off some remarkable long takes, again elevating a boy-meets-girl or boy-and-girl-have-rocky-relationship story into a delight for the eye. The use of sound (live sound from the cafés in which they shot, the occasional peal of gunfire) is also distinctive.MASCULIN FEMININ is perhaps less raved about than other Godard films from this time. It can arguably be called a minor effort in its recycling many elements from earlier productions while still searching for a way forward. That recycling isn't a bad thing, however, as the use of formal elements (division into tableau, a brutally abrupt ending) from VIVRE SA VIE, for instance (not to mention other earlier efforts), works just as well in the context of this story. I was initially baffled by the ending and how the film led up to it, but the more I look back at it, the more I'm impressed.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Jean-Luc Godard (À bout de soufflé (Breathless), Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou), this was a French/Swedish language film featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I didn't know what to expect, but I was going to watch regardless. Basically young idealist and noted author Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) has recently disbanded from the French Army and national service, and he is attempting, and returning to life as a civilian he is chasing Madeleine Zimmer (Chantal Goya), who is building a career as a pop singer. They do get together, despite having different musical tastes and political opinions, they also have pleasurable experiences with her roommates Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport) and Elisabeth Choquet (Marlène Jobert), but while she is climbing the ladder to fame, he is becoming isolated from his friends. Also starring Michel Debord as Robert Packard and a cameo by Brigitte Bardot, seen in a café rehearsing some lines. I will be honest and say that I did not pay the fullest attention to what was going on, but I don't think it really matters, as it has been described as an indulgent mess, with meaningless subplots and non-linear stuff, but the acting and direction is fine I suppose, an alright romantic drama. Worth watching!