MASCULINE FEMININE
To this day, not many people have seen the one film of Jean-Luc Godard’s that can unmistakably be called charming—“Masculine Feminine,” a lyrical 1966 essay on “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” The characters are Parisian youth chasing each other in and out of coffee bars and bed, particularly Jean-Pierre Léaud, as a not very serious radical, and Chantal Goya, a magazine photo editor who wants to be a yé-yé singer. The movie offers no more than fragments of narrative—just enough to suggest the elements of a love roundelay—interspersed with topical jokes, non sequiturs, journalistic interludes, and interviews with young people, including one entrancing six-minute single take of a “dialogue with a consumer product,” a fetching girl known as “Miss Nineteen.” Godard, poised between adoration and satire, seems at once entranced by the good looks of his characters and amused by their shallowness. Lighthearted and glancing in style, “Masculine Feminine” is nevertheless melancholy in mood—the shallowness makes the transience of youthful beauty that much more heartbreaking. Reissued in a crisp new print, with subtitles newly translated by Lenny Borger. In French.—D.D. (Film Forum; Feb. 11-22.)

FILM FORUM
W. Houston St. west of Sixth Ave. (212-727-8110)—New prints. Feb. 9-10 at 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30: “Los Olvidados” (1950, Luis Buñuel; in Spanish). Feb. 11-22 at 1:10, 3:15, 5:30, 7:35, and 9:40: “Masculine Feminine” (+).