Jean-Luc Godard's imagining of the Virgin Mary as an often-naked gas-station attendant and Joseph as a petulant, nattily dressed cabbie unsurprisingly displeased the devout and Pope John Paul II, who denounced it. Controversy aside, this muddy meditation is filmically stimulating, but rarely moving.
EXTRAS
A making-of, and a sweet companion short (about a girl struggling with
her parents' divorce) from Godard collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville; it
makes you wish she'd also directed Hail Mary.
