In the postmodern age, representation has become arbitrary; any notion of "rules", of what used to be cinematic "Law", has been obliterated by simulacrum. Bergala points out that "by the beginning of the eighties, when Godard returned to the cinema, the fine innocence of the old days had been lost forever. He no longer found any Law to speak of, let alone one he could lean on: now, all styles coexisted in a slack permissiveness" (58). With nothing to challenge, nothing to lean on and distort as he had done in the sixties, what was the point? With no tradition to play off of, "with the Law faltering to such a degree, the very desire to shoot had become threatened" (Bergala 58). Since old cinematic Law has been exhausted, the task now is to find, or, if necessary, even create a new Law to surpass. Of course, any "new" Law, invented only to be transgressed in the very same film, is really no Law at all -- it is the pretence of Law. New cinematic Law is a straw house -- it pretends to be both invented and broken at the same time. With little else to do in this age of the waning image and the homogenisation of style, "Godard would thus have to do all the work himself: simultaneously construct a semblance of a Law to transgress, and invent its transgression" (Bergala 58). This is particularly evident in one of his best films from the 1980's: Je Vous Salue, Marie.

Je Vous Salue, Marie continues along the path of fascination with the image itself. In Passion, the autonomous image gives birth to the narrative of the film, but now Godard takes this a step further, attempting to invent a birth of images themselves. In this film Godard presents the birth of images as being a "natural" process. As he himself proclaims,

what we wanted to show in Hail, Mary was signs in the beginning. Signs in the sense of signals, the beginning of signs, where signs are beginning to grow. Before they have signification of meaning. Immaculate signs in a way. And not just to give a feeling of nature, in order to be poetic, but to show the physical process of making nature possible. ("Fifth Period", 4)

Je Vous Salue, Marie is ostensibly a re-creation of the Virgin birth in modern times. But it is also an attempt to return to zero, to the beginning, to that "natural" moment between the birth of the image and its representation. Marie is the metaphor for this beginning -- nature shall represent her. But what shall represent nature? This asymptote of image regression, the attempt to return to a zero which does not exist, is the Law of virgin birth. Godard invents this Law here, linking Marie with the signs of nature, signs which mimic the beginning of signification, simulating creation from nothing. Shots of Marie are juxtaposed with reverential shots of the moon, the sun and the ocean. Beautiful, "pure" images of nature are inserted into the "narrative" of the film, images of rain, of flowers, of grass blowing in the wind. There are images of clouds in the sky, images which are not unlike those at the beginning of Passion. These images allude to a pre-signification, to some notion of their own, "inherent" meaning, a meaning unaffected by the presence of postmodern simulacra -- they are "ever-present images of something . . . pure, and indeed absolute" (Neupert 53). In other words, natural, "virgin" images are holy.

The suppression of mediation is the only way Godard can invoke this notion of the pure image. Marie is the representation of this purity, and as such she acts as a metaphor for the pure, unmediated image. Of course,

the idea that any image (or for that matter anything) could exist without its being mediated is unthinkable. Desire is mediated through another, thought is mediated through language, the body is touched through its surface, an image is seen through the frame. (Cunningham 75)

Joseph is finally taught that absolute love involves almost touching [Marie] and then pulling away. Marie joins the lesson by stopping Joseph's hand just before it touches her naked stomach, and then moving the hand away slowly . . . He then repeats the movement over and over, approaching her with his hand and then pulling it back, . . . submitt[ing] to her system of adoration. (Neupert 54)

Learning to respect the purity of the image is not done through purity itself, however -- it is done through force, the force of Law. Gabriel is the one who physically stops Joseph from touching Marie, and when Joseph asks why, all he gets as an answer is: "Because it's Law". Here again is the Law Godard invents for the moment: the Law of purity, the Law of a pure and natural image -- a return to the first image, to ground-zero. Once this Law is put in place, the next step is to transgress it.

The emphasis of the film is on Marie and how the Virgin pregnancy affects her, not the actual birth itself. The birth of Jesus (Junior) comes near the very end of the film, almost as an afterthought. It is here where the Law of purity is broken. Through the very act of giving birth, Marie is no longer pure, no longer chaste -- she has passed this on to her son. Junior states: "I am He who is" -- he is now the pure image, the one who just is. Not needing the purity of his mother any longer, he leaves to choose his disciples, while Marie is forced back to signification. The last sequence shows her walking through the concrete city, getting into her car (an unnatural object she would not enter through the beginning of the film), lighting up a cigarette and putting on lipstick. The last shot is a close-up of her mouth: a gaping, red-rimmed hole. Thus "the Virgin turns into a whore, the hole returns to break the perfection of the zero" (Mulvey 87). Her image has returned to signification, bearing the "unnatural" signifiers of the prostitute.

Godard's "post-Marxist" return to the cinema in the 1980's was marked by an increased interest for filming adaptations of past works rather than original stories: Passion invokes major paintings from the past; Prénom: Carmen. (1983) is loosely based upon the opera; Je Vous Salue, Mary (1985) retells the story of the Virgin Mother in modern terms; King Lear (1987) speaks for itself. The narratives chosen rework the past into the present, creating and blending the new and the old into one filmic text. It is as if Godard has realised that all narratives are basically exhausted; certainly his own artistic output has been a major factor in bringing this about. What is left, then, is to examine the image itself: deconstruct it, reconstruct it, use it as the starting-point for narrative investigation. Certainly Je Vous Salue, Mary is a substantial part of this investigation. The lushness of its images and the beauty of its subjects create in the viewer a reverence. It is a reverence not for narrative, camerawork, editing, or any other of the cinematic "tricks" in Godard's past; it is the reverence of image itself, image which seems to be apart from reality while still being a part of it at the same time. The texts of Godard in this "later" period invent a new cinema, a new filmic medium based on other mediums, other works, other texts, other schools of thought. They seek to capture a past they already know is internally false, thereby spiralling in on themselves. Je Vous Salue, Mary is the perfect example of such a text -- it is a film that looks so beautiful, so inherently new and perfect, but it is also a film which ultimately reveals this articulation as pretence. These are texts which set up the old Laws again just to knock them down, or invent new ones for the sole purpose of breaking them in the very next moment. They are texts which neither deny nor subvert postmodern simulation because they work within it, always aware that they are simulating the fact that they are denying or subverting the postmodern simulacrum. Thus a new type of simulation is born, the simulation of simulation. Can this really be a new road out of the postmodern and onto/into new ground, toward a new field of textual practice, one which exists beyond the grip of the postmodern while at the same time is firmly held in its grasp?

Askren, Carol L. R. "Moon Games in Godard's Je Vous Salue, Marie." Post Script Vol. 8, No. 3 (Summer 1989): 28-39.

Bergala, Alain. "The Other Side of the Bouquet." Jean-Luc Godard: Son + Image 1974-1991. Ed. Raymond Bellour and Mary Lea Bandy. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992. 57-73.

Cunningham, Stuart, and Ross Harley. "The Logic of the Virgin Mother." Screen Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 1987): 62-76.

Godard, Jean-Luc. "Godard in his 'Fifth Period': An Interview." Trans. Katherine Dieckmann. Film Quarterly Vol. XXXIX, No. 2 (Winter 1985-6): 2-6.

Mulvey, Laura. "The Hole and the Zero." Jean-Luc Godard: Son + Image 1974-1991. Ed. Raymond Bellour and Mary Lea Bandy. 75-88. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

Neupert, Richard. "Je Vous Salue Marie: Godard the Father." Film Criticism Vol. 10, No. 1 (Fall 1985): 52-56.