Questa è la mia vita

Yes, this is something I had to watch for uni, could you tell?

Amazingly, even though I'm in my second year, this is the first Godard film I've seen, and while I can definitely say I love his direction, I can't say much else about this really grabbed me.

It's only 80 minutes long, but even then I was getting a little bored by the end, and I think it can only be put down to the fact that for all the many gorgeous shots that ensure Anna Karina has as much room as possible to show off her performance (which is really good to be fair), I simply don't care about her.

There's really nothing special about the story to me, not after nearly 60 years of these kinds of dramas becoming quite common in the French New Wave's wake, and good god is the ending the very definition of an anticlimax.

I'm also not a big fan of how the plot seems to grind to a halt every so often so the characters can have a long philosophical quote-off, and the more I think about it, the more I could have narrowed all this down to the simple fact that I don't really care about the main character, and leave it there.

But I think I'll eventually see a Godard film that does really grab me the way this one unfortunately didn't, because he is responsible for nearly all the best parts of this film. Every shot is beautifully thought out, the editing is precise as hell, and he brought a great performance out of all the actors.

And since I'm a film student, I give it an average of three weeks before I'm forced to see another one, so fingers crossed.

So far in my exploration of Jean-Luc Godard I have remained in his masterful decade of the '60s, and as a result I've been treated mostly to films that are fun and exciting, toying with structure and cinematic conventions. Vivre Sa Vie fits firmly in his career, but it's also a surprising contrast to his other work which I have seen so far. Even in his more narratively focused Breathless, there's still a very cinematic quality to it, portraying a sense of freedom of expression and romanticism. Vivre Sa Vie strips away all of that and elects instead to present an almost documentarian look into the descent of the young Nana (Anna Karina, naturally) into prostitution.

The structure of the film is split into twelve episodes that bring us through Nana's progression. She's a young Parisian girl working at a record shop who wants to be in the movies, but needs money to pay her rent. It's a simple story, but the way Godard tells it is what makes it so intriguing. He presents Nana as an object of desire to many but an object of interest to very few. The men around her aren't interested in what she has to say, they put up with her words in order to get to what they are really looking for, her body and ways to profit off of it.

Karina's dance scene is classic Godard, but his unique approach to this film makes it much less freeing than in his other works. The dance in Band of Outsiders is a jaunty display of youthful rhythm and A Woman Is A Woman is loaded with fun numbers, but here the art of dance takes on an entirely different, and much more tragic, meaning. For Nana, it's a desperate plea to get attention using the only thing that she knows how, her body. In regards to the film, Godard stated, "The few episodes in her life that I am going to film are very likely of little interest to others, but most important to Nana," and I feel that he accomplished his goal very well here.

These episodes to most would seem relatively mundane, just normal days in the life of a prostitute, conversations and interactions of the daily routine, but for Nana they mean so much more. Her trip to the cinema to see The Passion of Joan of Arc has become almost iconic in Godard's legacy, and for good reason. In this moment Godard removes us from our state as voyeurs and instead plays us into Nana's position. He displays Nana as the film viewer, presenting the kind of emotional impact and life revelation that cinema can have on someone and getting the audience to completely empathize with her. Nana becomes the audience and, as a result, the audience becomes her.

The descent into prostitution is intriguing here, thanks in large part to the captivating and expressive work by Godard's muse, but Godard's metaphor for the life of an actress is also a fascinating theme that one can't help but notice. Displays Nana as the prostitute in her world of pimps and photographers, people passing her back and forth like a piece of meat, it certainly seems that he's making a statement on the film industry and the nature of exploitation in how actors are treated. They are passed back and forth by directors, producers, even the audience, and used for their image, much like a prostitute, and it's up to the actress to keep themselves in tact. As the opening quote of the film states, "Lend yourself to others. But give yourself to yourself".

I've seen people refer to the film as the "morning after" state of the Godard/Karina dynamic and I think that's an interesting way of looking at it. They had collaborated several times before, and would collaborate for many years after still, but Vivre Sa Vie seems to be the most intimate and exposing look into the relationship between the two of them as lovers and the relationship between actor and director at large. It's a very introspective journey that Godard takes us on, and certainly one of the most impressive I've seen from him yet.

This has become my favourite Godard. It doesn't have the jazzy razzamatazz and classic Paris shots of A bout de souffle, or the invigorating Marxist politics of Tout va bien, or the beautiful scenary, beautiful body and beautiful music of Le Mepris, but it has a softness and a depth that are just haunting. It has a documentary quality in its most reflective moments, when we see Nana lighting a cigarette or undoing her cardigan. It is a film that is made up of disparate strands - poetic, documentary, melodramatic. It both creates Nana as star of the piece, with her sweet smile, beautiful coats, and cropped hair, and even, at one point, identification with Joan of Arc, yet undermines this to underline how ordinary, how vulnerable, even how banal she is. If you're new to Godard, start with this.

My father had a lot of trouble to explain me what those men were doing, laying against the wall on a busy Sunday street, where there were a number of women in flashy clothes going up and down the street, looking at the men who passed by instead of doing window-shopping like me, and my father. It was 1954, in Lisbon. I came to know the men were pimps, and although I always respected the 'girls who were in the life', the pimp became my pet hate, to this day.

Does Goddard make an outstanding political speech here? I'm not sure. But now I understand why everybody was speaking of his 'Nana' in the Sixties. It's a poignant story, clear and sharp, with no tears but more like a gut punch. Particularly for the (unexpected?) ending. I disagree with those who said that the 12 scenes of the movie are 'unconnected'. They are connected! But the film should be fully appreciated on a second viewing for it, may be. These days, people are not able to cope with this much philosophy in a single film.

It's also a sad world when you discover, in 2001, that this film runs 85 minutes in the USA, 83m in Portugal, and 80m in France (it's so described in "Cinéguide" des Presses de la Cité (ed.1992). France shows the most short of the current versions of this wonderful movie about streetwalkers and pimps, about workers and profiteers; therefore, the most 'cut' or censored version - be it political or commercial censorship. France! the country that represented for me Liberty, Fraternity and Equality, when I was a 6 year-old kid opening his eyes to the beauty of chandeliers in a shop window, the beauty of girls in high-heels and knee-length skirts, and the wrongness of the half part of the world who lived without working, squeezing money of those who worked. Even if the work was - like Nana's - lending her body to other people...

There is a bleakness to this movie, which has a pretty and thoughtful young woman (Anna Karina), living in beautiful Paris, and yet descending into prostitution following a break-up. Director Jean-Luc Godard gives us twelve vignettes that are intentionally simple and unassuming to paint the picture. It's worth seeing, but at least for me, there are better French New Wave pictures, and certainly less depressing ones.

Anna Karina is lovely but I don't think she delivered a lot of range in this performance. One major exception early on in her new job is when she desperately tries to avoid a customer's kiss on the mouth. The look in her eyes as she squirms around is heart-rending, and disabuses us of any ooh-la-la fantasies we may have about her in this role. Another nice scene is when she dances to a jukebox song with awkward cuteness, trying to entice the few men watching her.

To his credit, Godard is unflinching in his honesty, and there is no sentimentality here. I loved the thoughtful scenes, the one where she's in the theater watching the 1928 Carl Theodor Dreyer film 'The Passion of Joan of Arc', and then later picking an older man's brain about philosophy in a café. The street scenes in Paris were nice to see, though sometimes the film comes close to descending into a home movie project.

Godard was making a point about the realities of life, and employing new filmmaking techniques while telling the story. It doesn't always make for great entertainment though, such as the section that's almost a mini-documentary on prostitution in Paris at the time. The ending is also ridiculously abrupt; it is a grand statement but to me borders on pretentiousness. Is it over-compensating for not showing some of the more painful aspects of prostitution along the way? (STD's, being beaten up, being degraded, etc?). Until then, with the exception of the attempted kiss scene, the 'insight' we get is mostly just a beautiful model being bored by her tricks. From Godard, I much preferred 'Masculin Feminin' (1966), so if you're new to him, I would start there instead. You may also try the Truffaut film we see on the marquee of a theater towards the end, 'Jules and Jim' (1962), which was a nice little tip of the cap to his fellow director.