Jean Luc-Godard’s Breathless plays a pivotal role in 2022’s Adieu Godard. Unfortunately, a sincere premise falls victim to lazy plotting and confusing stylistic choices. Godard himself would not approve.
We find ourselves in an East Indian village and are introduced to villager Ananda (Choudhury Bikash Das). Ananda spends his days like most teenagers left alone do: furiously watching pornography. One day, the local video store owner hands him a copy of Godard’s Breathless. Ananda’s friends don’t understand the movie, but Ananda soon becomes obsessed and sets out to have a French film festival in his village.
The film is shot in black and white, with the exception of color sequences featuring Ananda’s daughter Shilpa (Sudhasri Madhusmita) relating her father’s story. Godard influences abound, including long soliloquies about cinema and sex, Dutch Angles, and unreliable narration. But even with these homages, the film is a gigantic mess.
The main thing bringing it down is its condescending nature. The film basically beats you over the head with the point that these remote villagers are too dumb to appreciate Godard. Adieu Godard reduces Ananda and the rest of the villagers to backward morons, instead of afforded the opportunity to be real consumers of Godard’s works. It’s a shame, as the premise itself could lend itself to a great movie. But a great movie this is not. The film would work for those studying the legacy of Jean-Luc Godard, and those interested in Indian culture.