Review of Eloge De L`Amour

Introduction

"Eloge De L`Amour" or "In Praise of Love" is one of those films you will either love or hate. Like all of Godard`s films, it has it`s critics - and also whole heaps of praise!

As usual, he makes clever use of his medium, with the first (and longest) half of the film in black and white with the remaining part in colour. Throw in some digital stuff, interesting use of sound and you have a suitably intriguing French film.

Video

The film is presented in 4:3, I couldn`t decide if this was deliberate full frame or enforced pan and scan as it had little bearing on the film as a whole.

The first two thirds of the film are in black and white. The contrast here is very good, with the blacks truly black and no obvious banding in transitions from darker to lighter shades of grey.

When the colour cuts in, it is quite a change as here, things aren`t quite normal :) The picture is deliberately stark and surreal in nature with a somewhat over saturated look and feel to the proceedings. Not having seen this in the cinemas, I can`t say how closely this matches the original but there is no sign that any serious digital errors have crept into things.

Unfortunately the DVD menu is a static affair and the English subtitles are a permanent aspect (and not particularly good in places)

Audio

Sound hasn`t faired so well. The Dolby Digital 2.0 track is fairly well reproduced but not to the same level as the picture. Voices are a little muddled and sometimes difficult to drag away from the background soundtrack (which is quite good, however).

Features

We are presented with a rather "arty" trailer and two text-based items, a 4 page biography of Jean Luc Godard and a somewhat longer interview.

Both of these texts contain a lot of information and background into Godard and his way of filming things and are well worth the time it takes to read them.

Conclusion

Firstly, you will either love or hate this film (as I said earlier) A number of people complained about it`s apparent Anti-American sentiment, others raved about it`s cleverness and inventivity, yet others yawned their way through what they considered a dull pointless waste of time. With opinions so divided I leave it up to you to decide whether you like it :)

That aside, if you do watch it, then this DVD won`t disappoint. Whilst it isn`t perfect, the film is given a good treatment and the addition of a couple of decent text-based features makes up for the small deficiencies in the main feature.