Keep Your Right Up

Keep Your Right Up is an intriguing French avant-garde comedy film released in 1987. Directed by the French polymath Jean-Luc Godard, the film has a stellar cast that includes Jane Birkin, Dominique Lavanant, and Pauline Lafont. The movie presents a distinctive potpourri of character sketches, absurd comedy, and philosophical musings, all characteristics that Godard fans have come to admire and expect.

Keep Your Right Up – also known under its French title, Soigne ta droite – loosely follows the intertwined lives of six distinct characters, presented in an offbeat narrative style that breaks all conventional storytelling rules. The cast, helmed by leading French actresses Jane Birkin, Dominique Lavanant, and Pauline Lafont, bring their respective roles to life with nuanced performances. The movie flows in its unique pace, emulating the dreamlike sequence of debatable meaningfulness and unanswered questions, filled with vigorous intellectual musings and peculiar visual style.

Jane Birkin portrays the role of The Woman, an enigmatic character that, throughout the film, appears lost in contemplative thought trying to comprehend the chaos around her. Dominique Lavanant plays The Idiot, who, despite the name, offers witty and imbecilic commentary on the fleeting life events. Pauline Lafont helps to play off this absurdity with her character, aptly named The Individual. Their performances, paired with other equally stellar acts, help to portray a complex commentary on existence, identity, and the persistent urges of human nature, all while injecting a sense of absurdist humour into the narrative.

The this film is brimming with haphazard events, erratic characters, and a visual style that is distinctly Godard-esque. It combines every aesthetic of traditional and unconventional cinema, delivering a perfect blend of drama, comedy, and absurdity. The movie presents a high-paced montage of spontaneous sequences, where each moment is, in itself, a beautiful and unique canvas of eccentric characters, dialogue, and events.

It's a film that invites viewers to engage with it at a deep intellectual level. Unlike mainstream cinema, Keep Your Right Up does not rely on a clear plotline or character arc. Instead, it is a film about capturing the essence of each moment – sometimes through laughter, other times through thought-provoking scenes. This sporadic and episodic reflection of Godard's vision comes out beautifully through the impeccable performances of Birkin, Lavanant, and Lafont.

Godard's unique narrative style is also heavily reflected in the film's cinematography. The use of colours, angelic light and the cityscape create a visual world that reflects the film’s exploration of existential dilemmas. The movie pushes the boundaries of conventional filmmaking with its creative sequences and thought-provoking scenes. This is complemented by a non-traditional soundtrack, which enhances the film's ethereal and strange atmosphere.

The film retains Godard's signature style of blending absurd comedy with intellectual depth, featuring fragments of wit and cynicism balanced with undertones of existential dread, all treated with a careful, tender hand. Keep Your Right Up is the type of film where the journey certainly outweighs any conventional notion of a destination or resolution.

Keep Your Right Up is a film built on a firm belief in the potential of cinema to explore intellectual and philosophical heights. It purports a transcending blend of comedy, wit, drama, and philosophical contemplations. It's a film aimed at those who are looking for something out of the ordinary realm of cinema, something that, in its own quirky way, is a masterpiece in terms of its unconventional narrative and superb rendering of nuanced performances.

In summary, Keep Your Right Up is a film that leaves its audiences pondering. The intricacies of the characters, the subtleties of the narrative, and the exceptional performances by Jane Birkin, Dominique Lavanant, and Pauline Lafont leave a lasting impression on the viewer. The film proves to be an incontrovertible testament to Jean-Luc Godard's genius and vision in filmmaking, determining him as one of the mainstays in the arena of avant-garde cinema.