Tuesday, November 24, 2009

First Name: Carmen

A perverse tail of Carmen and her terrorist bank robbing team. Godard plays himself and Carmen's uncle. Carmen convinces Uncle Godard--who is living in what looks like an insane asylum--to use his apartment near the ocean to shoot a film. Although, the film is simply a cover-up for a bank robbery. This inspires Godard--who now truly believes his boom-box is a camera that plays music--to direct the "film" and begin making films again. Godard speaks of his the films he has made early in his career as if he made them in some other life--this was not only extremely eerie, but I felt like Godard was my crazy uncle telling tails of his youth.

In Carmen's initial meeting with her uncle, I feel a strong sexual tension between them. It almost seemed as the two had a strange and inappropriate sexual past. I was reminded of this tension when Carmen and Joseph arrived at the apartment by the ocean. Carmen sighs while in Godard's old room as if it brought upon strange, distorted, yet strangely satisfying memories. Did Godard and Carmen have a sexual past? Was Carmen molested by her uncle?

We do know for sure that Carmen was molested by Joseph. Joseph was what we now call "a sex addict". Carmen did initially enjoy sex with Joseph, but when she no longer wanted to be with him--he could not take no for an answer. He was constantly pulling down her panties and trying to instigate love making. He found her so desirable that when she refused him, he could not help but masturbate next to her while she was in the shower-- which Carmen responded to with the line "why do men exist?"

This strange sexuality made the film mildly entertaining, it was also pretty neat to see the man and the legend on screen. Other than that it seemed to skip around even when it was not skipping around. I kept finding myself thinking that I was watching a flashback, but in all actuality the film was linear.

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