Goodbye to Language (2014)

Interesting facts

Goodbye to Language is a 2014 French-Swiss narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Héloïse Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau, Jessica Erickson and Christian Grégori and was shot by cinematographer Fabrice Aragno. It is Godard's 42nd feature film and 121st film or video project, and his first to use 3D film technology. In the French-speaking parts of Switzerland where it was shot, the word "adieu" can mean both goodbye and hello. The film depicts a couple having an affair. The woman's husband discovers the affair and the lover is killed. Two pairs of actors portray the couple and their actions repeat and mirror one another.

Production

Godard first announced plans for the film during the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, when he said its title would be Adieu au langage. In a November 2010 interview, he joked that he wanted to cast Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner, and said, "it's about a man and his wife who no longer speak the same language.

Filming took place in Switzerland, including at Nyon near Lake Geneva and at Godard's home in Rolle. Godard worked with minimal equipment and a small crew, including Aragno, Godard's assistant Jean-Paul Battaggia and a "young man who ensures that the actors and props don't go missing and no passersby wander into the frame." All the equipment fit into a single van and included two 3D cameras, a handheld camera which Godard operated, a sound record…

Godard wrote a detailed script for the film that included both text and storyboards, but instead of a traditional script, the scenario consisted of "a series of written prose pieces with jottings and ideas." Kamel Abdeli said that he had to Google all the references in the script so that he could understand it: "you couldn't read the scenario – you could feel it and look at it." Actor Daniel Ludwig wrote, "Alongside sibylline texts and the master…

Both the female lead (Héloïse Godet and Zoé Bruneau) and the male lead (Kamel Abdeli and Richard Chevallier) were cast to physically resemble each other. The scenes with Bruneau and Chevallier were shot in the summer, the scenes with Godet and Abdeli in the winter. The actors waited two and a half years to begin shooting after being cast due to constant delays.

Aragno said that he and Godard did not want to use 3D as a typical special effect or gimmick. Instead, they wished to use it "to express new things." Several cameras were used, but most of the film was shot on the Canon 5D and the Canon 1DC. Other cameras included GoPros and Lumixes. Aragno used Leica lenses on the Canons "because the Canon lenses are too perfect...

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