Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Vivre Sa Vie (1962) – J.-L. Godard

In his third feature, Jean-Luc Godard continued to playfully innovate with film form, even as he focuses on the economic plight of women that leads them to turn to prostitution.  Godard’s wife, Anna Karina, is (again) delightful and charismatic despite the circumstances of her character.  She starts as a record shop assistant hoping to break into film but loses her apartment, tries (nude) modelling, and then runs into a friend who became a prostitute to support herself and her kids after a divorce and follows suit.  Godard breaks the film into 12 parts (it is subtitled “film en douze tableaux”) with brief intertitles announcing the content of the next section. As usual with Godard, the text is the thing and the characters chat away endlessly in interesting intellectual digressions; for example, later in the film, Nana (Karina) has a sit down with a French philosopher who argues that language is the basis for thinking.  Karina references Sartre (particularly his concept of “bad faith”) more than once (and the title itself points to existentialism methinks).  Most stunningly, she goes to see Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) and tears up at the dramatic performance of Falconetti (and her giant shorn head in close-up).  Godard also uses many close-ups of Karina (when he isn’t showing us the back of her head, as he does frequently) and, as shot by Raoul Coutard (1924-2016) in black and white, the film (and Paris) looks overcast and beautiful.  The end result is pretty exhilarating with Godard in the middle of his most entertaining period (before he became truly difficult and cryptic).  Nevertheless, this film too will take some unpacking.