Jean-Luc Godard (Switzerland)
Jean-Luc Godard's latest work was hailed as a return to form of his strong work in the sixties and eighties in Cannes and while that won't translate to the multiplex, it's a haunting intense work, intellectually exploratory but too emotionally acute in its melancholy to be considered merely academic. In contrast to the usual conventions about past and present, the portions of the story that are set in the present are pristine 35-mm black and white; the final third, set two years earlier, in the hot colour in digital video. With characters faces frequently off-screen (their voices are heard) we begin with a story of a director Edgar (Brno Putzulu) who is planning a film and is looking for a cast. Edgar recalls a young lawyer (Cecile Camp) to whom he wants to offer a role. But before he can, he hears some tragic news, which casts his mind back to the past. Two years earlier, Edgar had met an elderly couple (Jean Davy, Francoise Verney) whose story of the Resistance against Naziism was being pursued by a Hollywood studio. Their granddaughter was the laywer, there to check the contract. The theme becomes a meditation on the buying and selling of memory, of resistance and the sins of Hollywood in taking others' histories. A film, not just to be seen, but to jot down notes, ruminate and see again. - L.L.

(Tues., Sept. 11, 6 p.m. Uptown; Thurs., Sept. 13, 11 a.m., Varsity)