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
It's only a slight step back from Godard's hard-core political tracts, but the few concessions he does make--characters and a story, of sorts -- go a long way toward making the rhetoric accessible.
"Tout Va Bien" starts with director Jean-Luc Godard initialing checks and complaining about having to cast two stars in his latest film in order to get financing.(Nothing new there. That's been true of him since Event One.) The two stars are Jane Fonda and Yves Montand who play respectively an American reporter and a
commercial director(in other words, a skanky whore) who are married and get involved with a strike/hostage crisis at a factory. During that time, Godard ignores them for long stretches of time in order to focus on the workers' conflict, bemoaning the fact that nothing of real substance changed in the four years since the upheavals of May 1968. After that, it's back to the unhappy couple... "Tout Va Bien" basically feels like somebody took a message movie and evolved it to a point where there is only message, no story or characters to speak of. In fact, one could almost say this might be an attempted parody if Jean-Luc Godard had a sense of humor. Instead, he is just bitter that there was no cultural revolution in France in 1968. And he cannot hold a candle to Peter Watkins, especially with what he accomplished with "Paris Commune, 1871."
October 25, 2007
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
Engrossing tale set in an employee-based lock-down in a French sausage factory. Not a film you walk away from with gratification from a neat and tidy plot and a happy ending. Still mulling over this, but it stays with you and makes you think. My first impression as an American viewer is how naive and isolated
Americans can be concerning world politics and affairs. That's why most of my true-blue flix friends are from overseas... :)
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