Hail, Mary (1985, Fr.) (aka Je Vous Salue, Marie)

In French New Wave writer/director Jean-Luc Godard's controversial and upsetting avante-garde film - the erotic fantasy drama retold the story, now tangible and demythologized for modern times (present-day Switzerland), of the virgin birth and Mary. The emotionaly-detached film's themes were predominantly about having faith in the face of uncertainty, the body-soul (physical-spiritual) dichotomy, and the nature of male-female relationships.

The very short 72 minute film was marked by disconnected scene transitions, esoteric ramblings of dialogue, and dozens of cutaways and digressions - to images of nature and the heavens, including the moon, the sky, sunset, flowers, wind rustling through trees, ocean waves, rippling water, etc., accompanied by excerpts of classical music (Bach and Dvorak).

Outrage came over the reinterpretation of the Immaculate Conception and the fact that the Mary figure was often in various states of objectively-viewed undress, exhibiting her corporeal flesh throughout the provocative film. The film was condemned and denounced by Pope John Paul II at one time (he said that the offensive film "deeply wounds the religious sentiments of believers"), and picketed, banned, or boycotted at theatres.

• the title character was Marie (Myriem Roussel, Moroccan-born), a tall, freckle-faced teenaged basketball player (with jersey number 10) in present-day Switzerland, who worked as a pump attendant at her father's gas station
• a plane flying overhead brought two others: Uncle Gabriel (Phillippe Lacoste), an archangel, and La Petite Fille (Manon Andersen) - a young cherubic girl functioning as Gabriel's secretary; both individuals were taken in a taxi cab, driven by Marie's platonic, school dropout boyfriend Joseph (Thierry Rode), to the petrol station where Marie worked
• there, the Annunciation occurred when she was told by Uncle Gabriel that she was mysteriously and unexplainably pregnant: "You're going to have a child...You'll have a baby"; she asked quizzically: "By whom?...I sleep with no one"; shocked and confused by the news, Gabriel insisted it wouldn't be by Joseph: ("It won't be his. Never!")
• maintaining a chaste relationship with her boyfriend - the petulant, short-tempered Joseph - was difficult since he pressured her: "What is this? Miracles don't exist. Kiss me. What is all this?"; she continually vowed to not be touched or kissed by him
• irritated and unconvinced, he couldn't believe she was pregnant without sex, and became suspicious that she had other lovers: "Be simpler if you said you've seen other men"; she responded: "I sleep with no one; he was very upset: "So where's the child from?...Child must come from somewhere. For two years now, I can't touch you. Why?...You must be sleeping around. It's the only answer. Guys with big cocks!"
• during a visit to the gynecologist, Marie told her doctor: "I've got a pain: in the belly"; as she was being examined, she asked: "Does the soul have a body?" but was told she had it reversed - that the body has a soul; it was confirmed that she was indeed mysteriously pregnant (and still virginal) without having had sex with Joseph: "It wasn't with anybody....I haven't slept with anyone. I touch no one. No one caresses me...I'm going to have a baby and I've slept with no man. Joseph won't believe it"
• she told her doctor as he examined her: "Being a virgin should mean being available, or free, not being hurt. Well, do you believe me?"; he was amazed when he found her hymen intact: "It's true that it's true"; Joseph was still disbelieving: "It must be mine!"
• as Marie bathed in a tub and examined her own full breasts, she began to accept the miraculous fact that she would bear the Son of God, in voice-over: "Yet I rejoiced in giving my body to the eyes of Him who has become my Master forever, and glanced at this wondrous being. For in truth, He was that, then and always, not for His looks nor what He did, but in the silent power of what He was, the power gathered up in Him, vast as a mountain on the sky, that you can't measure or name, but only feel"
• Marie continually meditated about the meaning of the soul (or spirit) and the body (fleshly desire): (voice-over) "I think the spirit acts on the body, breathes through it, veils it to make it fairer than it is. For what is flesh alone?...You may see it and feel only disgust. You may see it in the gutter, drunken, or in the coffin, dead. The world's as full of flesh as a grocer's counter is of candles at the start of winter. But not until you've brought a candle home and lit it can it give you comfort"
• grumpy angel Gabriel was angered by the choice of Joseph as Marie's boyfriend and called him a "nitwit" and a "jerk," but his young secretary urged: "Have trust"
• Joseph asked Marie: "Why does my body repel you?"; she admitted she was "scared" because "all this doesn't happen every day. One's better as a pair..."; she asked: "Why don't you believe the spirit affects the body?"; Joseph stated he believed the opposite; frustrated, he insisted: "At least say you don't love me. I can't stand the silence"; she said that he must love and respect her soul and spirit by remaining chaste: "I know you love me. But it has to be something else...The hand of God is upon me and you can't interfere"; she added: "Your body's not the snag, it's your lack of trust"; he asked: "Why can't I want the child to be mine? Tell me who you did it with. I don't care, if you stay with me, if I stay with you, sleep with you, wake up with you"; he insisted that he didn't love another girlfriend, Juliette (Juliette Binoche): "I don't love her. I love you"
• Marie allowed Joseph to touch her through her clothing, to prove her innocence: "You see, I'm sleeping with no one. But I'll still have a child. You must believe it"; he vowed to act as her shadow: "I'll only be your shadow," to which she responded: "God's shadow...Isn't that what all men are...for a woman who loves her man"; as she undressed for sleep, she said: "Let the soul be body. Then no one can say the body is soul, since the soul shall be body"; as she laid down, she promised: "Thy will be done"
• soon, she admitted she could see Joseph's love for her, and he slowly began to stop pressuring Marie to sleep with him and to be sexual with him, but he still wanted to see her naked: "We're getting married: can I see you naked just once? I'll only look"; she also struggled with her sexual nature -- "...though I hide it, I'm in pain, like others. Even a bit more"; she wrestled in bed with her sheets ("They'll wrest from me that which I dare not give"), and touched her own bare skin - "To be chaste is to know every possibility, without ever straying"
• in a scene publicized on the DVD cover and in posters, Marie stood (bottomless) before Joseph as he reached toward her swelling stomach and said: "Je t'aime"; Marie replied, "No," and repeatedly slapped his hand away every single time until he said the words respectfully, with the forceful urging of exasperated angel Gabriel; she felt closer to God and asked if he wouldn't leave her, and he vowed to stay: "I'll never touch you"
• she then continued to struggle with her own discomforting and painful pregnancy, especially when she was alone at night in bed: "It will always be horrible for me to be the Master, but there'll be no more sexuality in me. I'll know the true smile of the soul, not from outside, but from inside. Like a pain that's always deserved"; she tossled more in bed, and arched her back, and resisted the human temptation to masturbate - making an angry fist gesture with her hand over her hairy genitals, although she slowly and clearly accepted her plight: "The Father and Mother must f--k to death over my body. Then Lucifer will die and we'll see, we'll see who's weariest - him or me. Earth and sex are in us...God is a vampire who suffered me in Him because I suffered and He didn't, and He profited from my pain. Mary is a body, fallen from a soul. I am a soul imprisoned by a body. My soul makes me sick at heart, and it's my c--t...I'm a woman though I don't beget my man through my c--t. I am joy. I am she who is joy, and need no longer fight it, or be tempted, but to gain an added joy."
• the two were wed, and then after the child was born in the spring, she mused: "There are no looks in love, no outward seeming, no likeness. Only our hearts will tremble in the light. I can't describe Him as He stood there, but I can tell you how the women looked on seeing Him"
• when he grew to be a few years old (Malachi Jara Kohan), he was permitted to stick his head under Mary's nightgown at the breakfast table, and point to her various euphemistically-named body parts: ("the hedgehog or the lawn" for her genitals, and her breasts were referred to as "bells"); Joseph grumbled: "He's too old to see you naked now," to which Mary replied: "Quia respexit, Joseph" - referring to the Magnificat when Mary in the Bible said: "For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden"
• one day, the young child announced: "I am who he is...I must tend to my Father's affairs" - and he disobediently ran off into the woods, neglecting his father; Marie was confident: "He'll be back - at Easter or Trinity Sunday"
• the film ended after Gabriel hailed Marie -- "Hail, Marie" - sarcastic or honest?; Marie sat in her car, smoked a cigarette and applied lipstick, reaffirming her motherhood: (voice-over) "I am of the Virgin, and I didn't want this being. I only left my imprint on the soul that helped me - you. That's all"