Finely balanced between the spry energy of Godard's early films and the
narrative/political meltdown that followed, Pierrot is a vital
crossroads in cinema history. Belmondo plays a cultured, bored
Parisian who runs off with the babysitter (Karina) to the south of
France. This 'last romantic couple' try to build a self-sufficient
world, but it's doomed: he thinks and reads the whole time; she grows
weary of his intellectualism. Picking up where Le Mepris leaves off,
Pierrot is similarly drenched in Mediterranean primary colours, but
it's in another universe formally. Godard is constantly subverting
expectations, giving and then withholding the pleasures of
narrative, trying to make cinema's Ulysses and damn near succeeding.
