影片涉及的是一对从事传媒业的知识分子的感情生活和发生在1972年五月的一家香肠制造厂的罢工事件，他们和工厂经理一起被工人堵在办公室里两天两夜。在影片中，我们看到和听到经理、共产党工会代表、"新左翼"领导人、普通工人讲述他们的见解；看到工厂的作业流程；看到蒙当拍摄广告的工作，听到他讲述自己从68年起的经历和失落；看到方达作为美国广播公司驻法国代表的播音工作，也听到她的失败和烦躁；看到青年激进分子的一次超市抢劫和警察的暴力镇压；看到法国社会各阶层的"标准像"；也看到蒙当和方达共同生活中的争吵与困境。甚至他们的爱情生活也构成了时代的转喻：二人相识相爱于68年五月时对一次罢工的参与，又在72年五月的这次罢工中发现个人生活的破裂。总的来说，这是在"六十年代之终结"之后的西方社会中，对知识分子的个人生活和时代社会的整体状况的一次双重书写，是对参与的无能和表达与再现的失败的一次痛苦反省。对戈达尔，这是他对自己此前电影实践的总结，也是为此后新的探索所设立的可能起点。

其实，作为左派的戈达尔，早在1968年从传统电影体制撤出来后，就以同情心关注着巴勒斯坦问题。他的吉加.维尔托夫小组在1970年于约旦实地拍摄关于巴勒斯坦解放运动的《直至胜利》，后来因为客观历史事件而被迫放弃。而这部未能露面的电影也成为吉加.维尔托夫小组电影试验的高峰。接下来的1974年，他与玛丽.密耶维尔在他们位于格勒诺勃城的声影制作室（Sonimage）完成了《此处和彼处》。

援引戈林.麦凯波在《戈达尔：影像、声音与政治》一书中所述：这部影片包含了《直至胜利》一片的部分片段，以及有关当代法国社会的影像。戈达尔将两者排列组合在一起，是想捕捉巴勒斯坦革命（彼处）和法国消费社会（此处）两者之间的差距。连接此处“和”彼处的这个连接助词“和”才是本片探索的焦点所在：我们在这里的生活、存在（法国）与那里的斗争（巴勒斯坦）两者之间存在着什么样的关系呢？一个电影工作者又如何创造出能够衔接二者的声音和影像呢？

In Godard and Gorin's free interpretation of the Chicago Eight trial, Judge Hoffman becomes Judge Himmler (who doodles notes on Playboy centerfolds), the Chicago Eight become microcosms of French revolutionary society, and Godard and Gorin play Lenin and Karl Rosa, respectively, discussing politics and how to show them through the cinema.

Description: NY TIMES REVIEW
JEAN-PIERRE GORIN, its French-born director, describes ''Routine Pleasures'' as a film essay about ''America - under-budget and in a shoe box,'' which is accurate as far as it goes.
The film is also a funny, very personal meditation on the activities of a group of model-railroad buffs in Del Mar, Calif., crosscut with random examples of the wit and wisdom of the seminal film critic Manny Farber, two of whose paintings are also examined in detail.
''Routine Pleasures" makes a point of never quite coming to a point. It's a movie that ponders possibilities and then moves on to other possibilities. It examines the vaguely interconnecting obsessions of the model railroaders and those of Mr. Farber, whose appreciation for Hollywood B-movies of the 1930's, especially those that deal with blue-collar workers, predates the ''discovery'' of those films by the Cahiers du Cinema critics in the 1950's and 1960's.
Mr. Gorin is fascinated and amused by the dedication of the model railroaders, a small group of men, age 16 to 70-odd, who meet twice a week in a former airplane hangar where they've constructed an elaborate, small-gauge railroad system.
On Tuesday nights they run their trains - freight and passenger -through delicately reproduced, miniature landscapes, cities and railroad yards, keeping to schedules measured in miniature time. Every six minutes equals an hour on the clocks by which they run their system. Thursday nights are devoted to repairing and refurbishing the rolling stock, the tracks and the scenery, and to trading railroad stories. One of the best of these is about a man whose mysterious, utterly American fate was always to order apple pie in a restaurant that had just run out.
Mr. Farber, who has been a friend to Mr. Gorin ever since the director came here from France in the 1970's, is seen only in still pictures, and as he is reflected in two of his oil paintings, ''Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz.,'' 1979, and ''Have a Chew on Me,'' 1983. Mr. Gorin, however, quotes him at length (and sometimes, because of Mr. Gorin's accent, not all too intelligibly), in attempting to draw parallels between Mr. Farber's ideas on America, art and movies and the railroaders' passion for living out their twice-weekly fantasies.
Scale is one of the themes. ''Life isn't too big a deal,'' Mr. Gorin quotes Mr. Farber as saying, ''and shouldn't be painted as such.'' Mr. Farber's two paintings are filled with representations of specific objects, people and events. The model railroaders' dreams are realized in scaled-down representations of real trains running through real places on real schedules.
''Routine Pleasures'' isn't strong on coherence, but coherence isn't what this sort of film is all about. It's meant to provoke questions rather than to answer them, which effectively deflects all criticism. Possibly far more provocative than this chatty, handsomely photographed essay would have been two separate films - one about the model railroaders and one about Manny Farber. But those two films might have turned out far more routine and far less pleasurable than this one.
''Routine Pleasures'' is Mr. Gorin's second American feature, following his expert 1980 documentary, ''Poto and Cabengo.'' Once known primarily as Jean-Luc Godard's collaborator during his Maoist years (''Tout Va Bien,'' ''Letter to Jane,'' ''Vladimir and Rosa,'' among others), Mr. Gorin is now clearly a film maker with his own style and obsessions, as well as a man with his own sense of humor. Eclectic Essay ROUTINE PLEASURES, directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin; written by Mr. Gorin and Patrick Amos; cinematography by Babette Mangolte; edited by Mr. Gorin, Miss Mangolte and Mr. Amos; produced by ZDF, Institut National de la Communication Audiovisuelle, Channel Four Television, London, and Jean-Pierre Gorin Productions.

Gracie and Ginny are San Diego twins who speak unlike anyone else. Living largely cut off from the world, the two little girls have created a private form of communication that’s an amalgam of the English and German they hear at home.

1970 film by Jean-Luc Godard