Undeterred by my earlier escapade with ‘The French Touch’ festival, I returned to the Alliance Francaise auditorium on Thursday evening to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film ‘Le Petit Soldat’ (’The Little Soldier’).
Set against the backdrop of the Algerian War, the film narrates the tragic love story of Michel Subord and Anna Karina who fall in love in spite of belonging to warring terrorist groups. The film pulsates with the same restless energy as ‘Breathless’, my favorite Godard movie, which was screened at the festival earlier on Tuesday. So, in spite of the little anti-climax at the end, when the DVD stuck and wouldn’t play, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, or at least the part of the movie I did watch.
After the movie I ran into G.K. Desai, a Bollywood actor and producer, who has worked in several of Madhur Bhandarkar’s movies.
GK and I first met each other at a 24 hour film festival a few months ago when we watched six movies back to back on a weekend. We again spent half a day together at the Tri Continental Film Festival in January. In fact, at every film festival I now attend, I almost except to see him in his really cute attire of denim shorts, ‘I love California’ t-shirts and baseball cap.