Number Two

Absent from film-making for three years owing to a motorcycle crash, influential French director Jean-Luc Godard returned with this dour tale of an ordinary family coping with the problems and pressures of modern life. However, Godard seems most preoccupied by the husband's impotence and the wife's constipation. But it's the style of the film that is most striking - Godard shot it all on video and uses a variety of split-screen effects, often using multiple images conveying different scenes, meanings and messages. On TV this needs great concentration, not to mention excellent eyesight, though the results are only intermittently rewarding.