The Cinematheque

“One of the ten best films in the history of cinema.”

J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Amy Taubin calls 2 or 3 Things ​“the greatest film by the greatest post-1950s filmmaker.” She’s not alone in considering it the auteur’s chef‑d’oeuvre. Inspired by a newspaper article on sex work amongst suburban Parisian housewives, Godard’s movie is a kaleidoscopic treatise on consumer society as brothel, offering a damning yet wildly exuberant indictment of systemic sexism and wanton materialism. Marina Vlady plays Juliette, a homemaker in an ugly suburban housing complex who begins moonlighting as a sex worker in order to afford more consumer goods. Colossal (now legendary) close-ups of coffee and cigarettes contend with giddy colours, graphic intertitles, numerous quotations, fourth-wall breaks, and the director’s whispery, self-scrutinizing voice-over. Typical of Godard’s work of the period, sexual exploitation is equated with capitalist oppression—more pointedly, American capitalism and imperialism. Juliet Berto, a key player in subsequent Godard films, makes her screen debut.

In French with English subtitles

“A shock to the cinematic system … Godard offers us multiple, intersecting, fragmented stories involving gender, language, consumerism, imperialism, and the topographies of desire represented by Paris and Juliette … A must-see-now.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“The most intellectually heroic of Jean-Luc Godard’s early features … Few features of the period capture the world with as much passion and insight.”

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader