Oh, Woe is Me (Hélas pour moi) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993)

This felt like a different Godard film - I think the first one I’ve watched that explores the issue of faith and God in such detail. The (minor) plot is about how the spirit of God may have entered the body of Simon (Depardieu) to experience a more carnal love and desire for his wife Rachel. Meanwhile, we see a book publisher arrive to try and investigate whether this happened.

The film features some great lines, clearly hinting at the artificiality of the situation in that they are not people but actors: “We’re not some characters in a novel”, and when Simon and Rachel are talking about break-up, Simon says “we didn’t act out that scene very well… No one bought it. Ask them.“ “we need to redo the scene”. As per usual, Godard comments on the nature of cinema itself: “Cinema language is imperfect” and quotes literary references: “Do not go gently into that good night” (said twice).

It also features some more amusing lines such as, “Did u know the Communist Manifesto was published in the same year as Alice in Wonderland?” and the intertitle: “Thus, gradually the past returns to the present through the imaginary stage of a visual experience which always draws attention”, before we hear a voice-over say “Wild Orgy”, which turns out is the name of a video that we then see, as we discover the voice is coming from a woman in a video rental shop. I can never just get used to the fact of how clever Godard is, and this film just makes me want to see a comedy film by Godard, if he ever has made one. There were some really weird sounds, such as when we hear an American voice-over saying “quit talking and start talking”, which turns out is a pinball machine which the character walks past. There’s also this weird bird noise, as well as what sounds like a French Stephen Hawking type robotic voice-over, which actually made me laugh (as well as consider whether there was a problem with my computer’s sound). Like he does in a lot of his films, the sounds often started before we saw the scene, or sometimes overlapped into the next

Onto the visuals, well the whole film was divided into sections called “books”, they weren’t very clear-cut parts and with the often multiple voice-overs at once (meaning heaps of quick subtitles to read), I didn’t have a lot of time to take in what was being said. I think maybe a dubbed version would be better. Also, I don’t know if it’s a homage to his Swiss background, but on the boat that went past neat the start, it read “italie” yet there was a little Swiss flag attached to its rear. I really liked the long shots, such as Angelique and her boyfriend (?) when the publisher (?) is spying on them from behind a tree − we see them walk past and then the shot lingers there until the spying man finally comes into the foreground. Also, some brilliant shots of Anne, where it starts of as blurry but then slowly she comes into focus as she comes closer. Those were wonderful to watch. Not to mention the amazing use of lighting, sometimes that’s all I was focused on: lights reflecting off book pages, people, etc. A big bonus of this Godard collection (made up of Passion, Prenom:Carmen, Detective and Oh, Woe is Me) is the bonus half-hour feature: “Jean-Luc Godard: a riddle wrapped in an enigma” which I discuss below.

An interesting film, not his best but some of the technical camerawork made up for any confusion in narrative (which it ends up I did comprehend, as I wasn’t sure if I was meant to think there was god in Depardieu?). Turns out that is the general consensus, added to the fact that Depardieu’s name is a play on the word God (“dieu”).

3.5/5