The Frame

The bad thing: Anna Karina isn’t in it, which makes me sad. The good thing: it’s good anyway. A spoiled bourgeois couple try to take a weekend vacation (with the ulterior motive of obtaining the woman’s inheritance, even if that requires killing her father, apparently), but keep running into obstacles. The most memorable of which is the longest traffic jam in the world, which we pan across forEVER, moving past car after car; some people have gotten out and are having picnics, others are honking madly, and still others, like our couple, pull into the other lane to try to get around it. The jam is caused by a car accident, the first of many crashed cars the couple comes across during the film, which I think symbolize the ultimate outcome of bourgeois life, as Godard sees it–a constant race to get the next big thing ending in tragedy that nobody cares about. The end lost me a little, but up until then, it was enjoyable watching Godard synthesize objects, ideas, and styles from his earlier films. And virtuoso tracking shots make me happy.
Well Above Average