In an apartment painted brilliant shades of red and blue, five young people--Veronique, a student; Guillaume, an actor; Henri, a chemical engineer; Kirilov, an artist, and Yvonne, a country girl--live according to the precepts of Chairman Mao, their shortwave tuned to Radio Peking. Godard portrays the idealism and intelligence of these “petit Maoists” as well as their mistakes as they engage in the process of becoming revolutionaries. At the time of the film's release there was no lack of critics in France denying the existence of such youths. But Pauline Kael has said that Godard makes “documentaries of the future in the present” and indeed it remained for the events of May 1968 to prove his points in La Chinoise prophetic. La Chinoise can be seen as a work of blinding clarity and simplicity; on the level of montage, it is probably the most “logical” film since early Eisenstein. As political fiction it is equally clear.