Jean-Luc Godard: 3-Disc Collector's Edition (Studio Canal/Lionsgate)
Here are four films from the post-New Wave output of Jean-Luc Godard, one of France's most famous directors and perhaps the New Waviest of them all. Dating from the 1980s and '90s, these films are experimental, challenging (or plain difficult, depending on your point of view), often whimsical and self-satirizing, cold, and demand that you engage with them more than we've been trained to do by movies. To summarize what the films are about means downplaying plot description and focusing instead on their radical aesthetic and core themes -- art, the quest for spiritual meaning, the meaning that lies beyond words, and "what a woman can do to a man." Heady stuff? You bet. But also daring, beautifully shot (a Godard hallmark) and, at their best, engrossing at a whole new level of your brain. Although this set is not an advisable entry point for anyone new to Godard's work, film school students (whether of the classroom or armchair variety) will find plenty to absorb here, and the rewards can be greater for being more hard-fought than the typical afternoon at the Regal.

First on hand here is Prenom Carmen (First Name: Carmen) (1983), which tells the story of Carmen X (Maruschka Detmers), a female member of a terrorist gang. She asks her uncle Jean, a washed-up film director (played by Godard himself) if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends, but they are in fact planning to rob a bank. During the robbery she falls in love with a security guard. The film intercuts between Carmen's escape with the guard, her uncle's attempt to make a comeback film, and a string quartet attempting to perform Beethoven.

In the strained and joyless Passion (1982), Godard is reunited with breathtakingly cameraman Raoul Coutard after 16 years, and with a trio of great actors he orchestrates his personal passions for classical music, romantic painting, and the business of film-making around his favorite theme of how life relates to love. On a movie set, in a factory, and at a hotel, Godard explores the nature of work, love and filmmaking. While Solidarity takes on the Polish government, a Polish film director, Jerzy, is stuck in France making a film for TV. He's over-budget and uninspired; the film, called "Passion," comes to a halt when producers refuse to increase his budget until he explains the film's story to them. Unable to do this, he becomes involved with Hannah, a hotel owner and factory worker, played by Isabelle Huppert.

Détective (1985) is the most accessible and the funniest of the films here. In a lavish Paris hotel, an unhappily married couple try to collect a debt from a boxing manager who is mixed up with the mob. Meanwhile, a detective is determined to solve a two-year-old murder that's somehow connected with the other stories that weave and intersect around him. Look for young Julie Delpy here.

Confounding and nearly impenetrable, Hélas pour moi (Oh, Woe is Me) (1993) is a modern updating of the Greek myth of Alcmene, in which Zeus assumes the shape of Alcmene's husband, Amphitryon, so that he can experience the pleasure of physical love. Here God enters the body of filmmaker Simon Donnadieu (Gerard Depardieu). When Donnadieu returns home, his wife Rachel (Laurence Masliah) realizes something is amiss but sticks by her newly divine husband. Meanwhile, the journalist Klimt (Bernard Verley) investigates this case of divine possession.

The Lionsgate box handsomely packages all four films with trés bien transfers and audio (Dolby mono in French with optional subtitles). There are no extras other than the vaporous locutions and twisting intersections of existence.

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