Jean-Luc Godard at the Centre Pompidou

Well, it's more like "kind of Jean-Luc Godard" at the Centre Pompidou. Jacques tossed me an invite to the opening (or "vernissage") of the expo for last wednesday. I showed up, date on arm, only to read the program after walking into the exhibition space a little mystified. The program reads "this is not an expo for Godard, but 'of' Godard." What the hell does that mean? Well, it turns out that the expo is largely a collection of video screens beaming a collection of movies not made by Godard over two different and large rooms. Take, for example, a scene from Ben Hur, Black Hawk Down, or even hardcore pornography (we're talking freaky here). Add in random collections of shrubbery, metal fencing, beds, and miniature rooms with video iPods cranking out, well, videos, and you've got yourself quite an exhibition.

For example, in one display, you see a doll that represents a Modigliani painting that just happened to appear briefly in a scene in Pierrot le Fou, one of his cooler films, thanks in a large part to the still-cool at the epoch Jean-Paul Belmondo. Anyways, that's about as clear of a reference as you're going to get. Also, nothing is titled. And the program's headings aren't exactly 100% obvious.

Searching for some explanations, I asked the host dad, who works one floor above where the project team for the Godard expo spent two years putting stuff together. He explained that originally, Godard was behind the idea of the exhibition, but spent literally two years not responding to phone calls and letters. He didn't respond. Not once. Much to the hair-tugging anguish of the director of the exhibition, who was kind of counting on some help from the director himself, who is, certifiably at this point in his life a little bit bonkers, even if he is a cinematic genius and one of the major founders of modern cinema...