Masculin Féminin

Paul comes out of military service and falls for Madeleine, who is trying to become a yé-yé pop singer. Godard does not narrate the relationship so much as interrogate it, moving through street interviews, conversations shaped like questionnaires, and answers delivered straight to camera. The subtitle is 15 specific events, and the structure really is that. He had planned to adapt two Maupassant stories and abandoned both. What survives is the name Paul and a cinema scene taken from The Signal. The most famous line in it is an intertitle: this film could be called the children of Marx and Coca-Cola. Jean-Pierre Léaud plays Paul. Madeleine is played by Chantal Goya, an actual yé-yé singer. French authorities restricted it to viewers over 18, which Godard complained about, since the film was made for exactly the people now excluded. At Berlin in 1966 it won Best Feature for Young People and Léaud took the Silver Bear for Best Actor. Who it is for: anyone curious about French youth in the sixties and Godard's formal games. Who it is not for: viewers who want a story to follow. The film scatters on purpose and never gathers itself back up.