Éloge de l'amour

In Praise of Love
French theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by	Alain Sarde Ruth Waldburger
Written by	Jean-Luc Godard
Starring	Bruno Putzulu Cecile Camp
Cinematography	Julien Hirsch Christophe Pollock
Edited by	Raphaëlle Urtin
Release date	15 May 2001 (Cannes) 16 October 2001 (United States)
Running time	97 minutes
Country	France Switzerland
Language	French

In Praise of Love (French: Éloge de l'amour) is a 2001 French film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The black-and-white and color drama was shot by Julien Hirsch and Christophe Pollock. Godard has famously stated that "a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order." This aphorism is illustrated by In Praise of Love (Éloge de l'amour), which reverses the order of past and present.

In Praise of Love polarized film critics. While some prominent reviewers were highly negative toward the work, others consider it to be one of the best films of its decade.

The first half of the film, shot on black and white film, follows a man named Edgar who is working on an undefined "project" about what he considers the four stages of love: meeting, physical passion, separation, and reconciliation, involving people at three different stages of life: youth, adulthood, and old age. Edgar keeps flipping through the pages of an empty book, staring intently as if waiting for words to appear. He is unsure whether the project should be a novel, a play, an opera, or a film. In Paris, he interviews potential participants from all walks of life (including those people Victor Hugo dubbed les misérables, whom Edgar considers important to the project), but is continually dissatisfied. The person Edgar really wants is someone he met two years ago, a woman who "dared speak her mind." At the urging of his financial backer Mr. Rosenthal, an art dealer whose father once owned a gallery with Edgar's grandfather, Edgar tracks down the woman, named Berthe, where she is working at night cleaning passenger cars at a railroad depot. Berthe remembers Edgar (and marvels at his memory) but emphatically does not want to be involved in his project. She holds down several jobs and also cares for her three-year-old son. Edgar continues to interview people, to his continuing dissatisfaction. He is able to visualize the stages of youth and old age but keeps having trouble with adulthood.

Edgar runs into Berthe at a lecture at a Parisian bookstore by expatriate American journalist Mark Hunter about the Kosovo War. Edgar makes it a point to tell Berthe that Hunter is an example of a "good American." Afterwards, the two wander the city of signs and monuments, talking through the night and into the next day, eventually stopping at an abandoned Renault plant, where they contemplate the collapse of the workers movement. They part company, and later Berthe speaks with Edgar over the phone; they talk about when they first met and she questions him as to why he has stopped talking about his project. They end the conversation with an air of finality. Edgar visits a homeless shelter and selects a man sleeping in one of the beds. In a tender but brief moment, Edgar directs two young people, to whom he had earlier assigned the roles of Perceval and his love Eglantine, to bathe the man in a shower. Mr. Rosenthal is there to witness the scene, but the status of "the project" is unclear. In the final scene of the black and white section, Edgar goes to meet a man who has some news for him about Berthe.