Masculin Féminin (1966) review

I (historically) have difficulty responding to JLG when he's at his most scattershot, and it's really no different for this film which has Jean-Pierre Léaud doing the old misguided, girl-hungry Frenchman routine and with some odd-ball Godardian puns and digressions cropping up now and then (for example, bitching about the aspect ratio of the film showing in the theater). I also can't be sure if Godard's making fun of or celebrating youth culture since the portrait he paints of them is one of (perhaps accurate) excessive self-preoccupation: they wander around and paint slogans and claim to be against the Vietnam War, but do nothing about it. Especially suspect is the way in which Godard has the various women in the film interrogated by the Léaud character, with the camera fixed on their blank, pretty faces while he asks them complex political questions. Okay, young women are empty-headed - we get it.