‘A Woman Is a Woman’ Highlights Anna Karina’s Charms and Jean-Luc Godard’s Artistic Aims

The French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard excelled early in his career by taking a genre and subverting it through self-aware asides, narrative non-sequiturs, and by mixing — what the kids today might call mashing up — other types of movies. His 1960 debut, “Breathless,” is a classic noir-ish thriller that is really more a philosophical statement of purpose; his next film, “A Woman Is a Woman,” plays like a musical comedy, yet this fun gloss merely masks what is really a bedroom farce/relationship drama. Restored in 4K, the picture arrives at the Film Forum for two weeks starting Friday, allowing cinephiles, Francophiles, and those looking for something different to immerse themselves in what the 1961 Berlin Film Festival called “originality, youthfulness, daring and impertinence.”Announcing its intentions, inspirations, and innovations, along with key personnel, in one of the coolest title sequences ever, we soon get actress Anna Karina popping into a Parisian cafe. Sporting a white trench coat (collar up, of course), her character, Angela, is beautifully chic and tongue-in-cheek as she winks at the camera. Soon we’re in a striptease club where, among the daytime drinkers and oglers, Angela weakly sings a silly cabaret song, though Godard and the film’s composer, Michel Legrand, give it the full musical number treatment. It’s the only song performed in the film, so the rest of the runtime may be something of a disappointment for those looking for more traditional musical moments. Still, its score and light comic tone are central to its conceit, reinforced a little later when Angela declares, “I want to be in a musical comedy with Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly. Choreography by Bob Fosse!” Another element that stands out in these early scenes is Angela’s melancholy, despite the appearance of flightiness. She also wishes to have a baby with her boyfriend Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) “in the next 24 hours,” an irrational wish reflecting her dissatisfaction with her life and their relationship. Combined with documentary-like interludes of everyday folk and glimpses of drab Parisian alleyways, this searching, anxious quality provides a counterpoint to the film’s playfulness. Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo in ‘A Woman Is a Woman.’ Via Rialto Pictures / StudioCanalAs one watches the long central sequence, occurring in the couple’s apartment, it becomes clear the story is more autobiographical than its genre experimentation suggests. Angela is Danish, like Ms. Karina; there are several references to contemporaneous events and movies, including “Breathless”; and the never-ending tit-for-tat of Angela and Émile’s arguments begins to sound serious after the initial humor, especially when the talk turns to Angela potentially sleeping with Émile’s best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo). When one remembers Godard and Ms. Karina were married in 1961, the reference to “once upon a time” at its start reads more like a statement of fact than a wishful, fairy tale expression. In two separate scenes, each male character wonders aloud if he’s in a tragedy or comedy, a question that could be asked of many of Godard’s early films. Indeed, some might find that its jeu d’esprit chafes against the theme of a couple going through a crisis, with the subject’s attendant longueurs and repetitions. But the flippant and the droll are always present, such as during a wonderful sequence in which the twosome, who are not speaking to each other, use words printed or written on book covers to communicate. Despite the uneasy, seemingly personal relationship at its center, Godard’s film nonetheless can be interpreted as a love letter to his charming partner. Ms. Karina would serve as his muse in several more pictures, including the mid-1960s triumphs “Band of Outsiders,” “Alphaville,” and “Pierrot le Fou,” even though the duo separated before the making of the latter two.If “A Woman Is a Woman” doesn’t exactly reach the heights of those films, it may be due to its intermittently sexist tenor, attested to by the use of the French song “You’ve Let Yourself Go,” by Charles Aznavour, and its limited scope, notwithstanding the colorful Cinemascope imagery. Still, its flair and frustrations go hand in hand with the director’s genre-bending tendencies, how he alternately impresses, innervates, inspires, challenges, edifies, and even entertains. Angela states at one point, “The truth should look different from a lie,” and one couldn’t describe the aim of Godard’s body of work any better.

‘A Woman Is a Woman’ Highlights Anna Karina’s Charms and Jean-Luc Godard’s Artistic Aims

‘A Woman Is a Woman’ Highlights Anna Karina’s Charms and Jean-Luc Godard’s Artistic Aims

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