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Poster for In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love

2001 · 1h 39m · PG Drama
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

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Overview

Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
51%
Tomatometer
Rotten

Godard has created such a hermetic, uncompromising world that only the hardiest cinematic spelunkers are likely to appreciate its depths.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post
Fresh

It's the intellectual ride of your life, as far as moviegoing goes.

Desson Thomson, Washington Post
Fresh

A haunting, intense work, intellectually exploratory yet too emotionally acute in its melancholy to be considered merely academic.

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
Fresh

The movie's ripe, enrapturing beauty will tempt those willing to probe its inscrutable mysteries.

Gene Seymour, Newsday
Rotten

The best indication of the film's pretentiousness comes from recurrent images of a book with blank pages, as if to point out that Godard has nothing to say, but so what? Let's throw in a few images and people will come anyway.

Marta Barber, Miami Herald

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