A more adept cultural critic could have a heyday with this film, exploring the notions of gender, culture, and politics in their historical moment. But what stuck with my from my viewing is perhaps more technical, less refined. Takeaways below.

1. This is the most approachable of Godard’s films. While the plot is still fragmentary, as is typical for his style, it’s much easier to follow than movies like Breathless or Vivre Sa Vie. I’d say this film is a decent starting place for the less-adventurous moviegoer that still wants to explore Godard’s work.
2. The film is much more of a political/cultural commentary than an individual journey. We still get great characters, but they’re clearly stand-ins for archetypes or forces in the culture at the time. This is almost the opposite of Breathless, in particular, where the characters must be understood as individuals first and then can be generalized into cultural critique.
3. As in Breathless and Vivre sa Vie, Godard creates true cinema magic with his leading woman in Masculin Féminin, pop singer Madeleine (played by real-life pop singer Chantal Goya). One cannot watch these movies without falling in love with these women, all of whom radiate an understated beauty. They showcase a unique blend of intellectual depth and stylish nonchalance, giving them an aloofness that nevertheless suggests a hidden tenderness. Godard creates in these characters a profound freedom that we as viewers long to posses as our own.
4. The soundtrack is excellent, particularly “Tu m’as trop menti” performed by Goya. It’s a fun post-50’s style rock song that pairs an almost doo-wop style backing with darkly French lyrics. The song was reused by Wes Anderson in his film The French Dispatch (2021).
5. Godard’s use of sound and silence throughout the movie is as excellent as any of his movies. He creates intense contrast, often at the beginning of scenes, by beginning with silent footage which explodes to life in sound just before the characters begin speaking.
6. Godard treats sound like another camera: he points it at things to focus or defray our attention.
7. The use of ambient noise is incredibly skillful. While it may seem distracting at times (such as when we hear a background conversation blending with that of the main characters), it also empowers more sustained visual shots. For example, in one scene, we watch Madeleine brush her hair for at least 20 seconds. In most movies, this shot would have to be reduced to five seconds or less before the audience would lose interest. Yet because the microphone pans around the room behind her as if it were a camera, we almost feel as viewers that we’re looking around the room too.
8. Godard also uses background noise in a similar way in intense conversations: characters are able to sustain longer pauses than most cinematic conversations allow. We get the natural building of suspense during the pause without losing interest because we are “fighting through” the background noise to hear the speaker’s next word.
9. The quasi-documentary style is interesting, particularly the scenes in which Paul interviews women. These scenes give us a great taste of what I sometimes call “well-mannered toxic masculinity,” wherein a man is asking all the “right” questions but is clearly not listening to the answers. Paul seems more interested in hearing his own next question, or in asking leading questions to try to persuade his subjects to his viewpoint, than listening to them.
10. Buried beneath the gender dynamics is a similar thread of the tension between living authentically (not blindly submitting the new consumer culture of post-WWII France) and not living at all (over intellectualizing life, while doing little more than reading, giving verbose speeches, and scribbling graffiti on bathroom walls). This is further explored as an American idea of freedom (freedom to enjoy life by spending money to get what you want) and a French-Existentialist idea of freedom (freedom to avoid the cultural pollutants that fragment the Self and tell you what you “want”).

Rating: 8/10. Recommended and requires no background research/knowledge of cinema to enjoy.