Vivre sa vie

"Birds are creatures with an outside, and an inside. When you remove the outside, you see the inside. When you remove the inside, you see the soul." "Vivre Sa Vie" is an incredibly desultory film about a confused girl (Nana) with an existential crisis; namely, the task of reconciling her decision to become a prostitute with her belief in a free will. As the repercussions of the "painting" she has rendered gradually spiral out of control, Nana becomes progressively more alienated from and confused about her life. This culminates in a chilling scene in a diner, where she lays her soul bare before a well-meaning philosopher, who responds to her desperate queries about the gulf between words and emotions with more words. Erudite words that she cannot possibly understand.

Godard probes his favorite existential motifs with wonderful sensitivity here. When Miss Karina espouses her belief that a "plate is a plate" and a "life is a life", the overwhelming sadness in her eyes betrays the torment of a woman who feels torn from her self by circumstance. Nana turns to prostitution after breaking with her lover, failing to secure a spot in the movies, and being evicted from her flat. Watching her struggle to exact some control over a world that is clearly much bigger than her designs is emotionally draining.

As usual with Godard, the cinematography is lush and his cinema eye is constantly roving. Before Nana's first trick, the camera cuts from Karina's panicked eyes, to a bar of soap. It is a relatively simple, yet effective, symbol that defines a relatively simple, yet affecting film.

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.

As the film opens Paul and Nana are going through a break-up. Each is filmed with their back to the camera. As Nana says she wants to die, it makes me think that, when we turn our back on the most significant person in our life, it can be like turning our backs on life itself. Such a big part of our identity is bound up with them that there seems nothing left. It is as if we have failed to heed the advice of Montaigne, quoted at the end of the opening credits: "Lend yourself to others and give yourself to yourself." Of course, Godard may not be intending for me to have such thoughts. For much of the film I get the distinct impression that he does not want me to interpret anything as anything, but just to accept it as it is. But the film, within a few minutes, has sparked off some interesting and worthwhile thought in me and I like this. It seems to be what art should do. And that it should do it simply by existing, not by trying to convey some message of its own.

For much of the film that follows, part of my mind is taken up with enjoying the crisp black and white photography. The streets of Paris, and other simple but finely observed detail. The lustre of Anna Karina's hair – she plays Nana – is as enchanting as if I were talking to her. And maybe talking about nothing very much in particular so that my mind could wander to such things. The quality of the print is sufficient to make out individual hairs – or hairline cracks in walls and furniture.

The overall effect – taken with some other devices that I only slowly become aware of – is to give a documentary-like feel to what the camera is seeing. Nana splits from Paul and drifts into prostitution. It happens without any big dramatics. She has been working in a record store, is having trouble paying her back rent, and, after a few other minor incidents, we see her with her first client. The look of repressed emotion on her face is one of the most stark and memorable images in the film. A bit like Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream. But sublimated into what is portrayed as a very everyday setting.

Later, in a rapid monotone, Nana's pimp even gives us a run-down of prices, laws, regulations and practices. It is almost the Brechtian splitting of the film into twelve chapters (each with long titles telling us what is about to happen), and Godard's increasingly frequent experiments that separate the sound from the image, that remind us this is fiction, not docu-drama.

For instance, towards the end and when Nana is with a young man she rather likes (and the attraction seems mutual, maybe love), their conversation is not heard by us but only seen on the screen as subtitles. They are communicating soundlessly perhaps, as lovers do.

There is a long scene where she discusses the meaning of language with an old man, a philosopher (played by Godard's former philosophy teacher). Although this is outwardly quite deep, I did not find the arguments nearly as profound or rigorous as in Godard's later film, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. Prostitution is not used here, as it is in 2 or 3 things, as a political metaphor. Susan Sontag, in her aptly titled essays, Against Interpretation, suggests that it is, "the most radical metaphor for the separating out of the elements of a life – as a testing ground, a crucible for the study of what is essential and what is superfluous in a life." She sees Nana as having divested herself of her old identity and taken on her new identity – that of a prostitute.

In the version I watched, quite a few lines were omitted from the English subtitling, so my smattering of French came in useful. But I needed some of the subtler French puns on the 'life' and 'chickens' pointed out to me.

As the film came to its not untypically Godard-like abrupt ending, I wondered for a minute if it was as great as some people often claim. The celebrated critic Roger Ebert, for instance, singles it out as one of the great movies of all time. My mind wandered to such movies as Last Year at Marienbad, and Jules and Jim, both made about the same time and which have left quite a deep impression on me. But only for a minute.

Vivre Sa Vie is different, yet again, to any other work by Godard. But it is deceptively unassuming, and a remarkably solid piece of work for all its sense of transience (Godard compared cinema to a train rather than the station). It can also be seen as a love letter from Godard to his wife, the beautifully photographed Anna Karina.

The crux of 60's Godard. His quirks are broken down into twelve segments manageable for the inexperienced viewer. If only one Godard film is to be watched, it might be this one. Though none of us would want to live in that world.

The film opens with an entrancing first ten minutes. The credit sequence and ensuing scene introduce the crucial theme of acting versus reality. Nana, played by Anna Karina, seems to never truly escape the personality of the actress who portrays her. Instead of avoiding this, Godard embraces the ambiguity and creates an entire film that obsesses over Karina's image. From the credits to "Fin"? the audience, like Nana, is fixated on her outward appearance. She constantly references her desire to be in movies and have her picture taken. Ultimately, she becomes a prostitute, seemingly the only place to turn for a girl who allows herself to be mercilessly controlled by men. This tragedy is underscored by her clear desire to be "special"? and, most potently, in her tearful viewing of Jeanne d'arc, a woman who faces death at the hands of men. Nana's personality and development can be seen as a vehicle for Godard's philosophy on film. The "men photographing women" had become perverted to the point of solicitation and death. The obvious parallels between the ending of VIVRE and BREATHLESS suggest a pessimistic condemnation of contemporary law and society.

Godard's deliberate camera motion, defiant attitude towards cinematic grammar, and clear pacing created a film that, though fictional, is one of the most honest human portraits available. Always experimenting with sound, the director never succumbs to standard over-the- shoulder dialogue sequences. Instead, he accesses another level of meaning by making deliberate choices over who is seen when saying specific words. Sometimes there are cuts and sometimes there are pans, but never is there a decision that seems arbitrary or purely for the sake of ease. While Godard's films do own a simple and unashamed quality that might lend itself to less expensive filmmaking, it is clear that his choices serve specific purposes and are always a slave to the greater objectives in the film. One of the most striking scenes in VIVRE SA VIE is where Nana is writing a letter. It is a simple act on which most directors would only spend a few seconds. Instead, Godard places a close-up on the letter and allows the audience to watch the entire process and become engulfed in Nana's (or Karina's) beautiful handwriting and the earnest quality of the letter.

VIVRE SA VIE successfully provides a tidy summary of Godard's quirky brilliance. For those willing to explore his genius, this film is the ideal starting place (if not working chronologically). But be careful. Once his capabilities are discovered, they will never leave you.

89.8

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.