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On average, every person older than 15 in the English colonies of North America (basically, today’s United States and Canada) drank the equivalent of 7 shots of alcohol per day

The secret, under-discussed weapon in filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s arsenal has always been his actors — the extraordinary performers that anchor the films, giving voice (and face) to the constant stream of arguments and asides and ideas. Seberg and Belmondo in Breathless, Constantine in Alphaville, Bardot and Piccoli in Contempt, Jagger in Sympathy for the Devil, Huppert in Every Man for Himself, Ringwald in King Lear, Karina in so many — throughout his over 50-year career, Godard has maintained a deep understanding of the power of star power.

Goodbye to Language, his latest feature and first in 3D, is the fragmented story of two nearly identical couples, infidelity, a wandering dog, and changing seasons. “The idea is simple,” Godard himself said, but the telling, of course, is not; the 83-year-old brings the layered style he’s been refining over the last two decades (of overlapping texts and images, voices and movements) literally into a new dimension. In this work, as restlessly experimental and rich with allusion as anything Godard has ever made, the emotional core comes, once again, from the actors.

The film’s breakout star (besides Roxy, Godard’s dog) is the young actress Héloïse Godet, giving a classically Godardian performance that delicately juggles the recitation of literary aphorisms with an intense immediacy and raw vulnerability.