A Close-Up Comedy?

A woman is a woman is a sandwich venture of Godard between his breathtaking debut in A bout de soufflé (Breathless) and the tragic classic Vivra Se Vie (My life to live) and I still wonder how all these three are different in all aspects. Godard was always uninhibited, lighthearted, and purposefully slapdash in style (as Ray commented once) but was a true experimental mind. He mastered the true sense of being wild in movie, and his intellects, playfulness with the audience and the characters are always worth mentioning.

I wont keep A woman is a woman in the league of Vivra Se Vie, A bout de soufflé, Masculine Feminine, Weekend or probably not in the group of Alphaville or Two or Three Things I Know About Her. But still it’s a must watch for his analytical views on being childish in one hand and imitating Hollywood musicals in the other. He created a perfect crescendo of conflicts between reality and the musical world (that is the fantasy world) which, sometimes feel as undistinguishable. After the movie finishes, I was wondering is it a comedy or a premonition of a tragic beginning? But, whatever, as critics and fans comment, this was the last time Godard was having fun!

Anna Karina was then Godard’s wife and without any squabble this movie belongs to her. It is a fascinating thing to watch how Godard used her in portraying two different roles, here and in Vivra Se Vie. I can’t comment on her acting talents but surely she mesmerizes you in showcasing characters and with her screen presence. I love watching her walking into the coffee shop, passing the traffic, from the drab looking outside, ordering coffee, and leaving at the same moment. She is the face simply mimicking a vagabond, dancing with music or her malfunctioned cooking (she flips an egg, goes other room and comes back in time to catch the same on the pan) and suddenly she is urging to be a mother, the music stops, reality bites and so on.

The womanhood is also bit capricious here, as Godard depicted. Michel Legrand's orchestral score bloats time to time and disappears when Anna Karina actually sings, and the scene where the actress wishes she were in a Gene Kelly movie only marks the hurting gulf between real life and celluloid fantasy. Well, Godard was always weaned from Hollywood, no wonder. There are lots of references to other movies, for example, Jeanne Moreau wanders through in a bar and Belmondo asks her how Jules and Jim is coming!

Godard once commented he wanted to prove that comedy also can be created from close-up shots. The mercurial face of Anna Karina, her occasional slinky winks or the commitment-phobo behavior of Brialy or the hapless Belmondo illustrate a tremendous youngness and showcase the 60s French New Wave culture. Overall it is a lighter work, unlike Godard’s later outputs, but it's a narration that could well have been tragic.

Godard knew how to punch people even after forty years of his creations; well he did a lot to me.

Une femme est une femme(A Woman is a Woman - 1961)
Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard