Recensioni de* critic*

The jagged momentum of Godard’s New Wave work is sublimated into a more complex and thematically pointed use of contrast between sound and image.

Joseph's all-consuming, self-destruction obsession with the uncaring Carmen is painted as being wholly pathetic, without the slapstick comedy that cushioned the motional blow in the earlier film—First Name Carmen was, in this writer's eyes, Godard's most emotionally impactful feature until he made In Praise of Love.

Prénom Carmen may not bear much resemblance to the sweep and grandeur of its source material, but it is arguably Godard's most visually and aurally ravishing film since Pierrot le fou (1965). It is operatic in its intellectual ambition reminding viewers how the nature of desire and the need to create are often predetermined by a complex of material circumstance – our jobs, clothes, physical health, social connections, cultural references and so on – in spite of ideals and aspirations.

A fine, contemplative, ever-surprising new comedy.

Godard, as usual, proceeds by contradictions: just as he aligns Beethoven's late quartets with the noise of Parisian traffic, so the film becomes more abstract as it becomes more personal, more tragic as it becomes more farcical.