Main Cast: Maruschka Detmers, Jacques Bonnaffé, Myriem Roussel, Christophe Odent, Jean-Luc Godard
Release Year: 1983
Country: CH/FR
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
First Name: Carmen tells the parallel stories of a quartet rehearsing Beethoven and a group of young people robbing a bank, supposedly to get the funds to make a film. Director Jean-Luc Godard attempts to make a film that resembles a string quartet, each of whose parts serves an abstract whole. The film is a meditation on the difficulties of youth in the 1980s, the relations between cinema and capital, and how to film the human body. Godard fills the film with carefully composed shots of bodies playing music, making love, and acting violently. His attention to bodies in First Name: Carmen makes the film's images very close to sculptures, particularly those of Rodin. The film's engagement with painting and sculpture continues Godard's ongoing investigation of the relationships between cinema and other arts ~ Louis Schwartz, All Movie Guide
The protagonist is Carmen X (Maruschka Detmers), a female member of a terrorist gang. She asks her uncle Jean, a washed-up film director (played by Jean-Luc Godard himself) if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends, but they are in fact planning to rob a bank. During the robbery she falls in love with a security guard. The film intercuts between Carmen's escape with the guard, her uncle's attempt to make a comeback film, and a string quartet attempting to perform Beethoven.
