Godard Mon Amour

Godard Mon Amour (Le Redoutable, 2017) is a French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM — director Michel Hazanavicius turning his Oscar-winning eye toward Jean-Luc Godard himself. The film moves through 1967 and into 1968, tracing Godard's romance with 19-year-old actress Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin), which began during the shoot of La Chinoise and wound into marriage just as Paris was about to shake.

Louis Garrel plays Godard: thick glasses, Maoist pamphlets, utter certainty that he is always right. Wiazemsky watches him shift from the director she admired to a man dismantling his own films in public and testing her patience in private. Bérénice Bejo appears in a sharp supporting turn. The backdrop — May '68, barricades, the French New Wave eating its own tail — gives the personal story a scale it earns without leaning on it too heavily.

Hazanavicius isn't reverent here; the film is wry about its subject in a way that makes it accessible even if you've never seen a Godard film. It works as both a portrait of a difficult genius and a quietly honest look at what it costs to be close to one. Stream Godard Mon Amour (2017) online on iFILM.