WEEKEND

   Film (1968). Comacico/Copernic/Lira/Ascot Cineraid. Written/dir Jean-Luc Godard, starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Valerie Lagrange, Jean-Pierre Leaud. 103 mins. Colour.

   A FABULATION rather than sf proper, Godard's satirical and violent film contains sf elements in its allegory of the Decline of the West. The progression of the film is from social order through ever-worsening scenes of ENTROPY, mainly imaged in increasingly large-scale car smashes, to anarchy, paralleled by a stylistic shift from naturalism to near-Surrealism. One extraordinary tracking shot begins in the real world and moves into motorized apocalypse. The bickering middle-class couple who at the outset started off on a weekend drive to the country observe the road accidents and associated violence with cool detachment, as does the film itself. Disturbing, sometimes lovely, images proliferate. Finally the couplecontinue on foot and join some armed anarchists; then the woman eats the man. Godard's previous quasi-sf film was ALPHAVILLE (1965).

   PN/JB

   See also: CINEMA.