film

This directorial collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s Tout va bien from 1972 is a brilliant, abrasive collision of politics, cinema and domestic life. Jane Fonda is Susan, an American journalist living in France with Jacques (Yves Montand), a former filmmaker now making commercials. The couple visit a sausage factory to interview its manager and find the workers on strike and the boss being held hostage. Their involvement forces both to confront the compromises underpinning their own lives and professions.

Godard and Gorin, working in the politically radical Dziga Vertov orbit, turn the factory into a miniature model of class society. A spectacular cross-section set allows the camera to glide through different rooms and social strata, and long takes, direct address and deliberately artificial performances constantly remind us that we are watching a constructed film, with results that are both playful and uncompromising.