Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1958)

Original title

Charlotte et son Jules

Directed by

Jean-Luc Godard

Genre

comedy film

Country

France

Runtime

13 min

Rating

6.4 of 10 from 58 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man named Jules traps his former girlfriend Charlotte in a hotel room and delivers a long, rambling speech about her faults and his own troubles. The entire short film takes place in that single room.

talkativeclaustrophobicwryself-indulgentstaticintimatetheatricalbrisk

What happens

Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (French: Charlotte et son Jules, transl. Charlotte and Her Jules) is a 1958 short film by Franco-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard. It is shot entirely in or from a hotel room, in which Jules (Jean-Paul Belmondo) gives his former girlfriend Charlotte (Anne Collette) a seemingly endless and self-indulgent tirade on her faults and his tribulations. The film's original length was 20 minutes, but it was cut down by a third by British censors. Godard directed the film as his second in a series based around two Parisians named Charlotte and Véronique. After a dispute with collaborator Éric Rohmer, Godard wrote the script for Charlotte and Her Boyfriend and enlisted his girlfriend, Anne Collette, to reprise her role as Charlotte from All the Boys Are Called Patrick. Godard cast Jean-Paul Belmondo as Jules, his first collaboration with the actor. Filming was done entirely in Godard's hotel room. The film was left undubbed and unfinished until Godard received an offer from Jacques Becker to screen it alongside his next film, although Becker's death precluded this. Godard dubbed Belmondo's lines due to the latter's service in the Algerian War. Godard biographers and film scholars have noted the film's autobiographical elements and homage to Jean Cocteau's play Le bel indifferent. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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