The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola: Two young lovers attempt to communicate throughout fifteen discontinuous, contrapuntal vignettes. “Marx for the young male, Coca-Cola for the female: mais oû est la tendresse?.... Although he is of the generation...Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is not one of them, being automatically excluded by his need for ‘la tendresse'.... Paul, awkward and out of place as a Martian, observes. Like Pierrot, he tries to build a private Garden of Eden; like Pierrot, he fails. And all around him, counter-pointing his inability to communicate his love to Madeleine in a world which excludes it, the atrocities pile up, gradually driving him further and further into himself until he vanishes....
“Casual and fragmentary as it may seem, Masculine Feminine is in fact probably Godard's most complex film to date. If Paul's odyssey in search of tenderness takes us through what is virtually a collage of la vie moderne at all levels - Bob Dylan as Vietnik and Negro as Black Muslim, the Pill and The Brassière, Vietnam and the Teenage Question - it is also a foray into the age-old Sex War. The title, after all, is ‘Masculine Feminine'....” --Tom Milne, Sight and Sound