Godard as an “Idiot” film director modeled after Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin, selling his work by the can; Jacques Villeret is “the Individual”; François Perier is “the Man”—and Les Rita Mitsouko are themselves, in the studio and the control room, as they record and mix. I is about speed—the speed of life, the speed of a jet plane and a moving train, the speed of thought—relative to “a place on earth.” It might be Godard’s most underrated film; in its Jerry Lewis-inspired sequences involving the Idiot, it is also one of his funniest.

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