Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

moonspinner55 Political upheavals at a sausage factory in France ensnare a visiting female reporter and her commercial-director husband; after they return to the normalcy of their lives, the couple find their marriage has irrevocably changed. Examination of the European class struggle of the early 1970s from filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin is cheekily framed (though for no apparent reason) by voice-over work from a man and a woman discussing the cinematic possibilities of the material we're seeing. Stars Yves Montand and Jane Fonda are flexible within this flaky milieu, though Godard and Gorin have made the characters colorless, stand-ins for real people. Some of the frank sexual dialogue is bold and surprising, and the cynical finale is thoughtful, but much of the picture is withered by unamusing, unenlightening grandstanding. *1/2 from ****

Robert Bloom Jean-Luc Godard's follow-up to the ultra-Maoist Weekend, featuring Yves Montand as a former New Wave filmmaker and his wife Jane Fonda, as they become active in a factory takeover. The film is of course very sympathetic to Marxism and perhaps Leninism, but it's certainly toned down from the blood fest that is Weekend, perhaps regrettably. Godard insists on reinterpreting and imposing entirely new ideas about what a film can and ought to be, in this case an intellectualized espousal of the working class struggle. A few moments of daring misce-en-scene are worth mentioning; fist, Godard includes an awesome cutaway of the factory to reveal the power-dynamics of the uprising within, and an elaborate tracking sequence in a supermarket to reveal the gross stupidity of capitalist consumerism. Tout Va Bien is clearly a step-down from Godard's brilliant features of the 60's, but it's still provocative and worth any cinephile's time.

John Seal Perhaps I'm insufficiently attuned to the works of Jean-Luc Godard--though I'm a huge fan of Breathless and Weekend--but Tout va bien plays like a comedy to me. The film satirizes multiple targets: the conventions of film-making, the pompous self importance of the bourgeoisie, the underdeveloped logic of the lumpen proletariat, and so much more, including Godard himself. Did you enjoy the legendary tracking shot in Weekend? Well, you'll love the multiple tracking shots in Tout va bien, which take place in the offices of a sausage factory (what could be more emblematic of commercial film-making?) and in a supermarket where riot police are doing battle with shoppers. Yes, there's plenty of political content for those so inclined, but for me, this film is akin to Lindsay Anderson's acerbic Britannia Hospital: nothing is sacred. Highly recommended, and I'd have given it a '10' if not for the presence of the eternally irksome Jane Fonda and her horrible '70s shag hair-do.

jzappa Godard builds his films from scratch. It's not that he shows up on the first day of shooting with no script or idea of what he wants. He simply works from an entirely different angle than most other directors. In an inventive, cerebral, pretentious manor, Godard and his co- director here, Jean-Pierre Gorin, shows us scene after scene. After each one, we naturally ask ourselves questions pertaining to the characters and the story. The story, or should I say the film, unravels further. We then not only ask ourselves the expected question, "What does this movie mean?" We also ask ourselves, "What is this movie about?" Godard drops characters and settings into a stirring pot, sprinkling it with title cards and captions, then pours them all into the oddly shape bowl of a film structure that he has fashioned himself. His cinematic expression is less a communication to and more a confrontation with the audience. He does not make his film easy on you. Still, his cinematography is interesting, and I admire some of his ideas.Have I made it unclear where Tout Va Bien stands in my opinion? OK. Well, let me tell you that it is quite an interesting film, an especially unpredictable one, yet Godard and Gorin, as the occasional European filmmaker will do, just as Haneke does, enjoy the feeling of being beyond the audience. What is said with Tout Van Bien, politically, socially, sexually, is expressed as if we, the audience, are the ignorant ones he is in disagreement with.The high points of this film are the presence of Jane Fonda and a very very long sideways steadicam shot that slowly moves from left to right repeatedly across several check-out lines in a grocery store as tension and rage slowly builds.