This seems to be the film that divides the Godard oeuvre between pre and post-Maoist ideology. As such, it’s a mess. I found it hard to stomach the casual misogyny, the adolescent political posturing and the fact that it’s so boring to watch.

Why are the women in Godard’s films always so passive, without thoughts, feelings and opinions of their own? The film has a completely masculine structure, with the female characters orbiting around the desires and needs of the men. They are reduced down to body parts or emotional punchbags absorbing it all and never resisting.

Watching “Masculin Féminin” I found myself giving thanks to the same generation of feminists who came along and kicked the asses of these chauvinistic “revolutionaries” who, while busy out on the streets standing up for the “working man”, (sic) also expected their little women to be at home making dinner and warming up the bed for later.

“Masculin Féminin” abandons the playful exuberance of Godard’s earlier films and ushers in the formless, inauthentic, radical chic that typifies most of his latter output. For me, “Masculin Féminin” lacks any sense of critique: the Vietnam War is just an excuse to daub paint, American Imperialism becomes a catchphrase flashed up on the screen like an MTV blipvert, the question of the individual and the mass political act becomes two men leering at a woman in a launderette. Ghastly.

This is a disappointing film. It’s superficial and unlikeable both in its execution and in its characterisation. Yes, you can admire Godard’s technique and his cinematic literacy, but if the end result is something that is so uninteresting, you have to ask what the point of it all is.

We felt sad. It wasn’t the movie of our dreams. It wasn’t that total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we have liked to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.

With Masculin Féminin Godard follows the template of many of his later films in mixing documentary, stylized dialogue and acting, humour, philosophy, cinema, music, imagery, etc, etc, etc. together to create something that at first seems a bit confusing, but somehow starts to make more sense as it goes. Ultimately it results in some powerful combinations and meditations about youth, politics and life. At the core of Masculin Féminin is the division and fascination between politics and the personal, between men and women, between popular and high culture, and between movies and cinema.
Godard’s films don’t exist outside of a cinematic context and while there is an intellectual framework, it still works within a world of love for cinema that I share. Fun, thoughtful, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately rewarding (as most films by Godard are).