A Woman Is a Woman

Jean-Luc Godard's 1961 film, Une Femme Est Une Femme (A Woman Is a Woman), won the Berlin Film Festival Jury Prize for its "Originality, Youthfulness, Daring, and Impertinence." It is certainly all those things, but is it any good? Almost twenty-four hours later after seeing it I'm not sure. Godard seemed to have no qualms, as he has one of his characters look into the camera and say, "I don't know whether this is a comedy or a tragedy, but I know it's a masterpiece."

In this film Godard takes on the Hollywood musical, or at least the shell of one. There is very little actual singing and dancing--what is left is all those parts in between, and for anyone who has seen musicals, these are usually the worst parts. It's also reminiscent of those frothy Hollywood films of the 1950s that starred Doris Day or Sandra Dee. So, after Breathless, which was an homage to the Hollywood crime film and Humphrey Bogart, comes A Woman Is a Woman. The difference, and it's a big one, is that I don't think Godard had any affection for the archetype he was using. The whole thing feels very cynical.

The story centers around Anna Karina as a striptease artist who lives with her boyfriend, Jean-Claude Brialy. She desperately wants a baby, but he's not so keen on that. He jokingly suggests that she get knocked up by their good friend, Jean-Paul Belmondo, who also happens to be in love with her. When she actually goes to bed with him, Brialy is not so pleased. This is basically the entire plot. In between are candy-colored bits of business (the film was Godard's first in color, and the photography by Raul Coutard is very pleasing to the eye) that are fluffy and fizzy, and completely self-conscious. The whole thing begins with someone saying, "Lights, camera, action!" The actors frequently break the fourth wall, and there are all sorts of inside references. At one point Belmondo says that he has to hurry, because "Breathless is on TV tonight." Belmondo's character's last name is Lubitsch, which gives us an indication who Godard was really interested in emulating.

There are also in-jokes involving Francois Truffaut. Jeanne Moreau makes a cameo, and Belmondo asks her how Jules and Jim is going. Immediately after that, Karina runs into a friend on the street, who is played by Marie Dubois, star of Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, and some jokes are made about that. Godard broke with Truffaut, whom he thought made "script pictures," while Godard was more interested in the camera, so I'm not sure whether these were insults or shout-outs.

The film also has a busy, absurdist style, with breaks in continuity that would characterize British films like A Hard Day's Night--Brialy, all of a sudden, is riding a bike inside the apartment, and in front of his stoop a couple is always there, kissing. Some of this is very droll--I liked a bit in which Brialy and Karina insult each other by using the covers of books from their shelves--this is certainly the only film in which someone is called a "Peruvian mummy."

While this film isn't as profound as Godard probably thought it was (or maybe not, maybe he thought it was all a joke, what do I know?) it's staying with me. Part of that is due to the luminescence of Karina, who won the Best Actress award at that same Berlin festival. I've only seen a handful of Godard's films, but his greatest genius may have been in choosing his leading ladies.