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Paris 1967. Jean-Luc Godard, the leading filmmaker of his generation, is shooting La Chinoise with the woman he loves, Anne Wiazemsky, 20 years his junior. They are happy, attractive, in love. They marry. But the film's reception unleashes a profound self-examination in Jean-Luc. The events of May '68 will amplify this process, and the crisis that shakes the filmmaker. Deep-rooted conflicts and misunderstandings will change him irrevocably. Revolutionary, off-the-wall, destructive, brilliant, he will pursue his choices and his beliefs to the breaking point... As he did with The Artist, Academy Award (R) winning director Michel Hazanavicius delivers another tribute to classic cinema, both wildly funny and deeply moving.
Reducing Godard to an advertising colour palette of primary reds and blues, Le Redoubtable is a crude, pointless exercise with no comprehension of Godard's filmmaking, cinema history, or, indeed, life itself.
Le Redoutable is a jokey Wikipedia cartoon of a biopic, skin deep in its character study and aggressively amused by its own barrage of Trivial Pursuit winks.
... Redoubtable fails on its own terms, falling short of the basic task of generating cinematic excitement and interest even out of the historic events which are more than the background to its story.
Havanicius sprays his subject with acid wit, and will delight cinéastes with several cunning pastiches of Godard's film-making style, though it's difficult to imagine that the venerable auteur, now 86, will see the joke.
Although it's probably not the film hardcore Godard fans wanted, Redoubtable is a funny, paint-by-numbers biopic about a man who revolutionized cinema as we know it, and remains a significant attempt nonetheless.
Choosing to ignore abuse, and taking away Anne's voice and agency in order to give a fuller view to Hazanavicius' beloved, Le Redoutable becomes much worse than a simple empty pastiche, verging into its own misogyny.
On the whole Redoubtable offers its audience way more than they bargained for with its genuinely impressive period representation of the events of 68, but it is ultimately let down but not quite knowing what it wants to be.