Quote Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
But he doesn't? That scene is JPL blathering on and on like a college professor. It probably doesn't help that I think Mao Ze Dung was a piece of shit who killed tens of millions of his own people, but that's neither here nor there.
First of all, I don't think one can take La Chinoise as an unambiguous endorsement of French Maoists (the film ends with Anne Wiazemsky's character committing a stupid murder because she walked into the wrong apartment). In the clip, the film's ambivalent attitude toward French radicals of the period can be seen in the juxtaposition of Léaud's monologue with the non-diegetic cutaways that both illustrate and mock the argument he's making. In other words, instead of becoming less cinematic by virtue of being so talky, the film makes talkiness cinematic.