In "the most intellectually heroic of Jean-Luc Godard's early features"
(Chicago Reader), he "wanders far and wide over two landscapes,
those of Paris and of a young female body. The "her" in the film's title
is meant to be Paris, which was in the midst of an enormous government modernization
initiative. There is, however, another "her," Juliette, a housewife who
regularly travels from the suburbs into the city, where she moonlights as
a prostitute. [Godard had read a magazine article, which inspired the film,
about this growing suburban phenomenon.] At this point in his filmmaking
evolution, Mr. Godard had all but abandoned (demolished might be the truer
word) classic narrative cinema in favor of the essayistic, the associative
and the analytic. Thus...instead of a specific story (boy meets working
girl), he offers us multiple, intersecting, fragmented stories involving
gender, language, consumerism, imperialism and the topographies of desire
represented by Paris and Juliette. Here, amid splashes of bold color, discordant
sound and brilliant observation, the personal meets the political, as the
curves of Juliette's body... find an echo in the soft lines of a city under
assault in the name of progress... The new CinemaScope print of the film
makes this perennial must-see a must-see-now." (NY Times) 35mm
Cinemascope.
more at rialtopictures.com
1967, color, 1 hour 30 minutes, France