Weekend

A nine-minute traffic-jam sequence, Mireille Darc’s 12-minute ménage à trois food-fetish fantasy confession (she likes an egg cracked between her ass cheeks upon climaxing), a smart nod to Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, a denouement featuring matrimonial cannibalism—Weekend has many unforgettable moments. However, director Jean-Luc Godard doesn’t abandon Marxist dialectic in his critique of bourgeoisie consumerism: The film was a response to France’s largest general strike, which took place in May 1968, when workers and students, along with Godard and notable new-wave icons like The 400 Blows’ Jean-Pierre Léaud, protested the de Gaullist government. (Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers takes place during this period.) Finally available on DVD, this is Godard’s quintessential anti-establishment film: wicked, humorous and unnerving.