Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

elvircorhodzic MASCULIN FEMININ is a romantic drama which, in an unusual and unclear way studying the attitudes and habits of young people in Paris. Basically, the story boils down to a youthful, somewhat confused, attitude towards politics, music, film and sex. The basic question is, can the young people cope with an economic growth, political situation and changes in customs through popular culture? Paul is an impressionable teenager who tries to make sense of the world by working as an interviewer for a research firm. He chases a beautiful pop star. They cohabit with two additional young ladies joining the nocturnal festivities. However, their attitudes are totally different. A battle between emotion and revolution can begin...The story is interesting, but inconclusive, without any conclusion. This is a humorous reference to an unstable youth, who can not found itself in any sphere of a modern society. The dialogues are long and tedious without a clear objective.Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul is a young idealist, who is a bit lost in his ideals. It's a bit pale due to („Les Quatre Cents Coups", 1959). Chantal Goya as Madeleine Zimmer is a young singer, who fits perfectly into some cultural changes.A nervous romance between Paul and Madeleine is the biggest asset of this film.This film is very appealing to a youthful, naive, point of view.

Scarecrow-88 Jean-Pierre Léaud gets a starring vehicle under Jean-Luc Godard's direction as a 21 year old kid named Paul returning from the war a jaded socialist. He meets a young woman his age named Madeleine (Chantal Goya) in a café and the two go through a hot-and-cold, up-and-down relationship that is at times sexual and passionate, aloof and distanced. Madeleine, it appears, is also possibly romantically tied to a roommate named Elizabeth (Marlène Jobert) who helps her on a budding musical pop career. Meanwhile, a third woman named Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport) emerges, another friend of Madeleine's, and although subtle and undefined, she is falling in love with Paul (Paul never realizes this; his activist unionizer friend, Robert (Michel Debord) does). Robert is in love with Catherine, and in a very inquisitive monologue sequence, he posits questions to dig deeper into what makes her tick with no payoff. This is one of many fascinating, lengthy monologues where dialogue is extensive, probing, questionable, commentary, and off-kilter. Most of the time, when there is a dialogue it features a young man and woman (typically Léaud's Paul and someone he's "interviewing"/"polling" or "interrogating") talking about sex, politics, or pop culture. That's the thing about this film: its significance as a cultural and historical artifact is important. It is a pivotal period where Vietnam is on the tongues and a shift in mores in society was changing. Philosophers, musicians, and political figures make their way into scenes with Godard feeling it was key to establishing time and place. This gives the film a relevance that we can look back on and realize spoke on what was happening during that period in the world. Focusing on young adults of different types within a group centralizes them as an example of a cultural shift taking place. Still kids with a direction in life still a bit elusive. I do think Godard can go a little far with including so much of his own art in his films. The inclusion of "Alphaville" for a theatre sequence, such an example. Bridget Bardot getting a rather pointless cameo reading lines with a hyperactive acting coach. Sometimes his films lose steam when he does this.Madeleine, to me, gradually separates herself from Paul (perhaps not even consciously) as her life begins to take off due to her pop career (in the studio, when Paul slides his hand to hers she pulls away; when she is greeted by a radio personality for an interview she treats Paul as if he were her chauffeur) and his takes on a more political and sociological change. One interesting scene has Paul interviewing (he calls it "polling French women in general") a "Miss 19 winner" who won the award and benefited from its "advantages" (travel, niceties, exposure), asking private, personal questions about sex and political issues. Sufficed to say, she tries as she might to avoid the topics that aren't comfortable, although he's quite skilled at pulling out of her certain thoughts she is reluctant to share.The first real dialogue shared between Paul and Madeleine is a good example of what the film is like as a whole. Questions are asked and comments are made quite openly and honestly. Barriers seem to diminish as the two become a bit more comfortable sharing details about themselves. I do wish Catherine and Paul had one such scene as I think these are the two characters with far more potential never realized by the tragic conclusion. A series of violent acts happen around or in close proximity with Paul. A blond shoots two black men with Paul unable to warn them in time. A knife-wielding troubled soul at first appears to be threatening Paul in a game room, eventually stabbing himself. An older man takes some matches from Paul, pours gas all over his person, and sets himself on fire. A "maid" shoots a father in the back while he tries to remove his son from a café. In the final scene, deeply sad and unfortunate, has Catherine speaking about an incident in an apartment to a police officer getting details on it. It proves that Paul's closeness with tragedy eventually befell him.I did find the dynamic regarding Madeleine and Elizabeth interesting in that there appears to be a love affair among them. They think Paul is unaware, but he noticed them in a shower together (behind a steamed glass giggling), and when his eyes are closed while imitating a tune from Bach Elizabeth caresses Madeleine who doesn't swat away her advances. Catherine, appearing to be a third wheel, is given little moments with Paul that would seem to indicate she has a taste for kink and decadence (she asks him if he has ever heard of De Sade; she briefly gets a chance to ask Paul if he is still in love with Madeleine, with him shooing away the question; she playfully disavows Robert's implicating her of being in love with Paul), and a specific interest for him if he'd realize it. But Paul and Madeleine's endless "is this love or not?" back and forth interferes with potential with Catherine. By film's end, he'd never get a chance to truly understand that.

lasttimeisaw My fourth Godard's film (CONTEMPT 1963, 7/10; BREATHLESS 1960, 9/10; PIERROT LE FOU 1965, 7/10), so apparently I am not a newbie in Godard school, but to see the defiant Jean- Pierre Léaud (Francois Truffaut's alter ego in THE 400 BLOWS 1959, 9/10) has grown into a handsome young man, a boy-becomes-man leap from Antoine Doinel to Paul, with sharp stare, worldly-wise sophistication (a wonderful whistler and vocalist too), in a Godard's picture, which strikes as a sublime force of naturalistic liaison between La Nouvelle Vague auteurs. Quoted by its most famous intertitle: the film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca Cola, it is an acute assessment of the young generation in Paris at 1960s, through Paul's relationship with his singer girlfriend Madeliene (Goya), her roommate Elisabeth (Jobert), and another lady friend Catherine-Isabelle (Duport), a girl whom Robert (Debord), Paul's friend, is courting. The narrative is chronic but haphazard, there are chockablock cultural and political references (Brigitte Bardot, Vietnam war, communism etc.) and cinéma-vérité interviews (including a lengthy one with Elsa Leroy, the first winner of France's Miss Seventeen), an apolitical malady seems to prevail among those young hipsters. Paul is an overt idealist, in this adult-absent filmic essay, he is the witness and the victim of the encroaching globalization, Léaud possesses a spontaneous flexibility to act without affected veneer, every scene is rehearsed beforehand, but his delivery sparkles with authenticity, fierceness and bluntness, which is a gift rather than talent. Goya and Duport manifest two sides of one mirror, the ideal girl image, one is a sweetheart-type while the other is more demure and non-threatening, with the sine qua non that both should be beautiful. Encompassing 15 acts, MASCULIN FEMININ is quintessential Godard, a solid contemplation on its time's zeitgeist, in some way his subjective initiative is less radical and idiosyncratic than his iconic BREATHLESS, however, it is a stroke of genius from a cinematic torchbearer in his zenith, from a viewing experience in 2014, half a century later, it is still highly stylized under its unadorned aesthetic doctrine.

Criss Cross There is a Godard that we cannot stand. He loves to talk about politics in his movies, but in much of them he talk with passion but without pity and let that the spectator forget about his voice and the message goes beyond redemption. Nothing of this happen in this masterpiece.Here, Godard told us the story of a man (Leaud, in a very Antoine Doinel aura) and woman (Beautiful yé-yé singer Chantal Goya)in 15 scenes. And the experience is breathtaking. It incorporate the politics in the sex of each one, at the end, their souls and their bodies are fulfilled of this mentality. And we believe him, because we are men and women ... and we understand it.And of course, our characters, love be young. Love to run, to sing, to have sex, love to love and to be loved. With the thing that made BANDE À PART a great experience, MASCULINE FEMENINE is in definitive one of Godard best work. The less pretentious, enjoyable and human. Criterion got an excellent copy of it.