ON LIFE, LOVE AND GODARD.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

JEAN-LUC GODARD'S most recent cinematic essay ``In Praise of Love'' (``Elogie de L'Amour'') chews over a lot of ideas, then spits them out in the fractured, declarative manner that we've come to expect. Some of it ends up more masticated than intellectually digested, but even when he's not at his most critically insightful, Godard can still be smarter than any 50 other filmmakers still at work.

There are ruminations on the difficult task of creativity, on history and memory and politics old, new and eternal, on America's supposed appropriation of other people's cultures and, like the label says, on love. But what emerges most strongly amid all of the purposely disjointed speech, contrasting visuals and snatches of drama is a struggle to locate the meaning of adulthood in all its complexity of emotions and responsibilities.

Now a senior citizen, Godard, the most cerebral and formally rebellious of the directors who once made up the youth-charged French New Wave, seems to be wondering if the eternal bad boy artist is still a vital cultural figure or just a deluded, selnvolved big baby.

Certainly, those who have struggled through some of Godard's recent efforts can't be faulted for feeling he's devolved into the latter.

While no easy sit, ``Praise'' at least comes at us in beautifully wrought pictures (the first half is all glistening, cannily composed, black-and-white celluloid Paris that brings back fond memories of the auteur's early 1960s masterpieces; the second half color-drenched video of impressionist-quality loveliness).

What there is of a narrative through-line involves ... um, well, I think he's a director. His name is Edgar (Bruno Putzulu), and he's auditioning actors for something, but he's not sure whether it will be a film, a play, an opera or even a novel (cue the scene in which a book with blank pages is intensely studied). Anyway, it's supposed to examine various seasons of love, and while he has the youthful and old-age episodes worked out, Edgar's having the hardest time nailing the middle passage - that's right, the adult stage - down.

Part of this has to do with Edgar's obsessive pursuit of Elle (Cecile Camp), a woman who he feels is perfect for one of the adult lovers but who rebuffs his every effort to cast her. She seems to remember something that he's forgotten but shouldn't have.

The second, color video movement illuminates what might have been. Set two years earlier, it involves Edgar researching a World War II-related music project. He interviews an elderly couple (Elle's grandparents, as it turns out) who are having second thoughts about selling the movie rights for their exploits in the French Resistance to a Hollywood outfit called Spielberg and Associates.

Much declaration ensues about Americans buying up others' psychology and memories because we have none of our own. Godard obviously wrote and shot this before last year's terrorist attacks, or this month's plethora of commemorations. Still, such pronouncements were as reductive at their utterance as they are now.

It may not be as cutting, as witty or as true as back in the glory days of ``Weekend'' and ``Two or Three Things I Know About Her,'' but who else engaged in filmmaking today is so cognizant of the cultural and moral issues involved in the process? Besides, one man's maturation is just another man's getting old. Godard, at least, is doing it with fire in his veins and some semblance of grace.

IN PRAISE OF LOVE - Three stars

(Not rated)

Starring: Bruno Putzulu, Cecile Camp, Jean Davy, Francoise Verny.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Gorgeously shot, almost penetrable Godardian ruminations on memory, exploitation, the creative struggle and love. Not that that means you would necessarily want to make the effort to figure it all out.