Jean Pignol Movies

Racism and the games people play with it aren't unique to the U.S. by any means. In this French comedy, Rachid, a nice-looking Arab boy, plays with the pervasive fear of non-whites in Paris by having two friends approach pretty girls while looking as sinister as they can, so that he can "rescue" them and strike up an acquaintance. When he and Denis, a black West Indies man, find themselves in pursuit of the same girl, oddly enough, they become best friends. They team up in order to try and persuade the girl's parents that they are respectable enough to rent an apartment from them. However, as any person of color knows, this is far more easily said than done wherever race (and class) are issues. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

After collaborating on a series of small-scale political films under the alias of the Dziga Vertov Group, pioneering French director Jean-Luc Godard and filmmaker and activist Jean-Pierre Gorin attempted to fuse their Maoist theories of revolutionary art with a more accessible structural framework in this leftist comedy drama. Susan (Jane Fonda) is an American journalist working as a French correspondent for a radio network; her husband, Jacques (Yves Montand), was once a major filmmaker during the French New Wave, but now supports himself directing television commercials as he tries to come to terms with his political responsibilities. Jacques tags along when Susan visits a sausage factory to interview the manager (Vittorio Caprioli); their visit unexpectedly coincides with a wildcat strike staged by the plant's employees, who hold the boss captive as they lash out against both their employers and their union in a bid for more money and greater dignity. Over the course of the day, many of the participants speak to the camera about their varying degrees of commitment to radical political and economic change, while we are also afforded an inside look at Susan and Jacques' splintered relationship. Shortly after Tout Va Bien was released, Jane Fonda made her famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) visit to Hanoi, an action which led Godard and Gorin to create a companion film, Letter to Jane, in which they dissected a photo of Fonda in Vietnam for its multiple levels of political meaning. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi