There’s a sense that the phrase “later Godard” – meaning most of the great director’s post-sixties work – is used pejoratively as much as a descriptor: it means impenetrable, pretentious, stridently political, cold, formalism for its own sake.
“Comment ça va?” and “Hélas pour moi,” two later films separated by nearly two decades, denote my first engagements with later Godard, and neither of the two films bear out this critique.