In 1987, after a series of films with relatively difficult subjects, Jean-Luc Godard temporarily embarked on a new and lighter track and wrote and directed King Lear and Soigne ta droite. This latter feature, in which Godard revealed himself to be a true Homo Ludens, is filled with inventive monologues and dialogues and scenes which hang together like loose sand. The film is basically made up of three elements: the French pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko, well known at the time, rehearsing to make a new record, a group of air travellers confronted with a pilot with suicidal tendencies and sketches with the comic actor Jacques Villeret, a.k.a. ‘the individual’, who is famous in France. Soigne ta droite turned out to be a very experimental film in which nihilism and (self) mockery vie for supremacy. Godard took perceptible pleasure in making – and acting in – this rarely screened, unique film.
