Coffee Mate made a Godard reference?!!
Posted in Uncategorized on June 23rd, 2010 by laura – 5 Comments
Now I’ve seen everything! Just now I was enjoying a fine episode of The View on Hulu when an ad started playing, as will often happen when I’m trying to watch online videos. I was prepared to lower the volume and look away to avoid being subjected to yet another car ad when suddenly I spotted out of the corner of my eye something I really didn’t expect.
The ad in question was for Coffee Mate, which I find to be delicious. But the scene in question, just a brief shot (around the 14 second mark), was not of a thirty-something woman cuddling up with a cat or sipping her coffee thoughtfully in a bay window. No, it was a direct reference to one of my favorite scenes in the influential French New Wave film Band of Outsiders (French title: Bande à part) by Jean-Luc Godard! If you’ve seen the film, you’ll remember the notable scene where the trio of protagonists performs a choreographed dance in a café while the narrator discusses what they’re thinking about. Well, here they are dancing the exact same dance and dressed in period outfits, and the actress playing the Anna Karina role really does resemble her! But why are there two people and not three? Oh well, can’t win ‘em all. Maybe the threesome implications of the film were too daring for modern audiences?
Anyway, here is the ad, and below it the original scene.






