Jean-Luc Godard has returned to the existential, surreal world he mined in the 1960s with IN PRAISE OF LOVE, which was up for the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was chosen as the closing film for the 39th Annual New York Film Festival. Godard's film is about nothing and everything as a man continually speaks of his project, with many of the characters conversing offscreen in fabulously vague and confusing parables and platitudes. The plot comes in bits and pieces, in memorable shots and bizarre scenes: a man reads a blank book; an attractive woman passes by a car and flashes the passengers; Hollywood wants to buy the story of an older couple who fought in the French Resistance; and such familiar Godardian themes as death, art, politics, and religion are discussed, however anamorphically. And then, suddenly, the 35mm black-and-white film is awash in reds and oranges as Godard switches to color digital video when the story goes back two years into the past, and the camera starts and stop, freezing on various shots, then moving on. As with the best of Godard, IN PRAISE OF LOVE is challenging, difficult, nonlinear, and wholly original, so unlike anything else.

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