Bob Taylor My theory is this: you have to watch this film after midnight, after all the cares of the day are forgotten (the phone call you forgot to make, the stuff you didn't pick up at the store) and you can relax completely. Just let the scenes unspool before you, the beautiful images wash over you. Godard has made a kind of masterpiece, under trying circumstances--he wanted Vittorio Storaro as DP, and had to call in Coutard, with whom he was no longer friendly--and his efforts were not crowned with commercial success; the picture was a flop.Jerzy's character is fascinating; he seems to take inertia to new heights. Imagine refusing to shoot because the lighting is wrong. Fritz Lang (and Godard himself, of course) would never have used that silly excuse: they would have worked around any problems on the set. Miss Lucachevski, the tall and very elegant script-girl, says that she is tired of working on a production that produces nothing and we can feel her frustration. Jerzy asks her to read a passage from Les Miserables about Enjolras's passion, then he makes the bloodless remark about bloodless times I've used in the summary. Radziwilowicz is a pudding-faced actor who shows us little of what he's feeling. Hanna Schygulla on the other hand is extraordinarily animated and focused as the uneasy female angle of the triangle with Michel and Jerzy. She is photographed better here than Fassbinder managed to shoot her in his films. MacCabe's book on Godard tells how she came to work one day after a night of excess and Godard insisted on shooting her with every wrinkle lovingly recorded. Whatever, she is gorgeous, every bit as striking as Anna Karina, or even Jane Fonda, to name two of Godard's leading ladies.The enactments of the paintings are ravishing, worth the price of the video in themselves. Myriem Roussel posing on the pool deck for the Ingres Bather is stunning, the entry of the crusaders into Jerusalem will delight you. A knockout.

Slime-3 Very little in this film can honestly be said to grab the attention for long, unless perhaps, you are a Godard completest. An art historian might appreciate the messages hidden within the old master painting being turned into a movie by the director at the centre of the piece. For the rest of us it's hard to follow threads of the various partially connected stories in which largely unappealing characters bicker, berate and bed one another. Jerzy a Polish movie director, has literally 'lost the light' in his big budget production. His efforts are hamstrung by news of Solidarity's emergent uprising in his native land, the financial demands of his producers and his involvement with two women : the owner of the hotel in which most of his film company lodge, and a dowdy sacked worker at her husbands factory. That's pretty well it. There's not much more. The images of the old masters Jerzy is attempting to turn into a film, although he seems to have little concept of exactly how, are nicely lit but the films exteriors around the promising location of Lake Geneva are drab, the interiors even worse and despite some big names among the cast there is little charisma in evidence. I've watched it twice and sadly 'Passion', an oddly inappropriate title in itself, made no more impression on the second viewing. The Godard of 'Pierrot Le Fou' (a film I loved) seems a long way from the Godard of 'Passion'. Other reviewers have clearly found a meaning and beauty that I have missed. But hey! If it floats your boat then thats good.

taylor9885 This is a good introduction to late-period Godard: all (ideological) passion spent, Oncle Jean is just going to show us a good time. Pretty girls lolling around the pool naked, glamourous stars like Hanna Schygulla with little to do, Isabelle Huppert when she could still play dewy-eyed ingenues, a ridiculous peplum being filmed by greedy, unscrupulous types (the director should have been played by Jacques Dutronc instead of that dour Polish actor).It's 1982,these are the Thatcher-Reagan years, nobody thinks about Vietnam or the Palestinians or civil wars in Africa--people only want to make money. Godard gives us hip product-placement, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Mozart instead of Coke or Pepsi.

Daniel Karlsson Jean-Luc Godard makes me think clearer. After having read the other comments accusing "Passion" of being boring and pretentious crap, I can only say that I strongly disagree. Comments like those just make me angry. JLG's films are definitely not boring; unless you are completely unintellectual and don't have a clue of what is going on. "Passion" and JLG's other films are fresh and intellectual and philosophic. Godard is unique. It is as simple as that. Newcomers might look after some kind of plot, and find themselves confused. I don't know why they do, because a film does not have to have a fixed plot, a story or something like that, but in a way, it gets one by itself. Godard clearly points out in the film that "in cinema there are no rules".Maybe you could say "Passion" is about art. And Poland (Godard never hesitate of adding political aspects in his later films). A lot of classical music is played during the scenes, and Godard keeps turning the music on and off like he uses to. At one occasion he is playing Mozart's Requiem, then he turns it off in the middle of the piece. Then he turns it on again from the beginning, turns it off, and starts over. My intuition told me that the music would continue once the same track had been played three times. And so it did. You can trust Godard. The visualizations of classical paintings by Delacroix, Rubens and Rembrandt are spectacular. Overall it is a beautiful film, with cinematography by the legendary New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard. The first half contains some scenes were the photo and the voices are not synchronized, giving a messy impression (which doesn't have to be negative). This impression is increased by the several childish quarrels among the characters.9/10