Konterr Brilliant and touching

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

elvircorhodzic A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is a comedy drama. That is a visual magic, which is colored with a crazy romance, incomprehensible feelings and a pleasant music.The main protagonists are exotic dancer Angéla and her lover Émile. The story is mainly based on their crazy relationship. She wants to have a child, but he isn't ready. Émile's best friend Alfred also says he loves Angéla and he is waiting for his chance. Since Émile stubbornly refuses her request for a child, Angéla finally decides to accept Alfred's plea and sleeps with him...This is another experiment directed by Mr. Godard. An intimate pleasure and a girlish caprice have agitated frisky youthful spirits. An explosion of colors and sounds is in contrast to the poverty and penury in this film. The story has some elements of a musical comedy, but it basically boils down to a drunken farce. A dance, songs, inappropriate jokes, a bit of nudity and sexual charge reflect the youthful freedom to somewhat ironic way.Anna Karina as Angela Récamier is a lively and playful girl, who can not control her emotions and her growing desire for a child. She is an ordinary girl who behaves like a star, and finally becomes just a woman.Jean-Claude Brialy as Émile, her lover, is a quite crazed, perhaps on a verge of despair. A very serious life decision for a young man, has eventually become a part of the general burlesque. Jean-Paul Belmondo as Alfred Lubitsch is a lover from a shadow, who is trying to prove his love for Angela. His methods are quite interesting. What can I say ... it is Belmondo.This is a frivolous joke, which in the background provokes serious topics.

Scarecrow-88 Charmer from Jean-Luc Godard stars a very appealing Anna Karina as an exotic dancer, Angela, wanting a child from her store owner boyfriend, Émile Récamier (Jean-Claude Brialy). Émile, however, isn't particularly interested in a child or marriage, but just keeping their relationship as it is currently. Angela begins to ponder moving on from Émile in favor of her ne'er-do-well friend, Alfred Lubitsch (French New Wave icon, Jean-Paul Belmondo). A ditsy love triangle develops but it never rises to anything all that melodramatic as Godard keeps the tone light and fluffy. Still, Godard incorporates intertitles, editing techniques, camera pans (two such instances has the camera doing a complete turn to the right and left inside the little apartment Angela and Émile share), ebbs and flows in the musical scoring (to emphasize the playful banter and antics that poke fun at each other that exists between Angela and Émile) in order to give his film a sense of unpredictable and off-the-cuff style that isn't what you normally see in a romantic comedy. There's even a bit of a sing-songy method in how Angela addresses Émile at times when they do this back-and-forth « sizing each other up » flirty (and purposely antagonistic in a less imposing as much as mischievous way) dialogue in regards to topics that range from the aforementioned child talk to « what's for supper ». It fits neatly into the French New Wave era with its use of Parisian locations (Godard even « goes crazy » by shooting actual people just trafficking through while Angela convinces a discarded Communist to join a exotic dancing establishment). Jeanne Moreau even cameos for Godard in a conversation with Belmondo about her film, Jules et Jim ! Another scene has Angela talking with a friend about Shoot the Piano Player, done in a type of kidding form of charades. Respect like that is often added to films of Godard's for Truffaut. The « presentation in Eastman color » and the « use of Cinemascope » seems to indicate that Godard, along with several of his contemporaries working at that time, was reaching a significance as a filmmaker…a prominence. But Karina's enchanting presence and bewitching beauty is so captivating, his techniques are only enhanced because she is in his film. Belmondo has one of those archetypes that worms his way out of paying debts, a hanger-on slacker who just so happens to have enough charisma, clever wit, and sense of humor to get by. Karina knows he's not for her, but even considering him as a suitor (he tells her he loves her) is an indication that Brialy is failing her. Of course emerging with « I want a baby » out of the blue does kind of serve as a surprise. The couple have a way of provoking each other. A particularly memorable couple of scenes has them using the titles from books on their shelves to communicate how they feel using a lamp light to guide their way through the apartment and a source to emanate the exact words meant to provoke reaction. I think A Woman is a Woman is a showcase for Karina's lighter side and the whole film is presented in a manner that doesn't attempt to cause us to look much deeper than the surface ; except perhaps once scene where Karina, when listening to a jukebox song chosen by Belmondo, attentively understands what Braily means to her, and another that has Belmondo mentioning a newspaper article regarding a love triangle and two letters sent to two lovers by a woman. I think after you watch enough Godard, if you don't like "dialogue movies" then perhaps he isn't for you. The camera, as always did, adores Karina. Photogenic doesn't even begin to describe how she lights up a screen. To kind of give you an idea of where the couple is in their relationship, Braily refers to Karina affectionately "pet".

Christopher Culver Jean-Luc Godard's first two films (À bout de soufflé and Le petit soldat) were thrillers that drew inspiration from American noir, but UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME (A Woman is a Woman, 1961) shifts gears drastically to a riff on American musical comedies, with the characters occasionally singing and dancing, and the camera jumping between realistic depictions and these musical interludes. But as one of the seminal figures of the French New Wave with its desire to shake up conventions, Godard added some elements of his own. As the film opens, the soundtrack keeps cutting abruptly in and out, an aural equivalent of the unsettling jump cuts with which he started his career. There are allusions to his earlier films and to his New Wave peers, and just a touch of sarcastic allusions to French political tensions.The plot is fairly simple: cabaret dancer Angela (Anna Karina), who is clearly not looking to buck any traditional sex roles in an age of dawning feminism, wants a baby. Unable to get it from her partner Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy), she gradually welcomes the advances of Émile's best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo). The way in which this triangle ultimately works out is a little surprising considering that it was made in 1961. The most appropriate adjective overall for this film is "cute". The characters spend a lot of time bickering, but always with witty ripostes. Karina here is not yet the great actress of later roles, and Godard uses her instead as essentially a Barbie doll (nice to look at, not much there), but it works well enough for this particular story. The film was shot with no fixed script, and why it's not a free-for-all, there are clearly improvisational elements here that only add to the film's charm, such as the characters' encounters with everyday Parisians in street scenes.

Steve Pulaski A Woman is a Woman catches the elusive and acclaimed director Jean-Luc Godard in a relatively good mood as he centers this particular story around the makings of a musical, a staged affair, and communication through the use of various book titles for his sophomore directorial effort. Hot on the trails of his debut film Breathless, released in 1960, Godard followed up a year later with A Woman is a Woman right before all the acclaim and renowned remarks about his influence on film became relatively ubiquitous in film circles. I only note this because with A Woman is a Woman, there's an assumption that Godard is still saying what he wants to say with it, whereas something like Film Socialisme, at this time, his most recently-released directorial effort in 2011, that feels like he is compiling a wide-variety of images together that have no cohesion just to see if people will still say he's a genius and hold his work to high art.If you can't already imply, I found Godard's follow-up to the endlessly intriguing French New Wave-staple Breathless to be pretty lukewarm and underwhelming. I did not expect A Woman is a Woman to be anything like his debut feature, mainly because I have yet to see two Godard films that are heavily alike in terms of what they portray, however, I did expect this particular film to have insight and intrigue to its material. With this film, it feels like Godard is throwing numerous things against the wall - be it ideas, commentary, characters, relationships, etc - and not particularly trying to tie them together in any way. The result is a massive conglomerate of ideas that are not fully-realized and a tedious cinematic affair at just eighty-four minutes long.Godard's wife during the sixties and frequent collaborator Anna Karina is the main character here, as beautiful and as playful as ever as Angéla, an exotic dancer in a relationship with French yuppie Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy). However, their relationship seems to be predicated off of the likes of arguing about whether or not to have a child, eventually resorting to their assorted library of books to continue their argument in a unique but quickly-tedious method of storytelling. In the meantime, Émile's good friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is more than willing to have a child with Angéla. This sets off an even greater fire-storm of arguments that eventually lead Angéla to agree to have sex with Alfred in order to conceive a child.Godard seems to be trying to do two major things with A Woman is a Woman. One, is find another way to tell a conventional story, this time by the use of intrusive but intriguing title cards along with the ever-present book titles held up by the characters. This creates a less linear but a more refreshing way to guide along a pretty tame and unremarkable story, even if it isn't completely successful. The second is its take on the typical American musical, referencing the likes of Gene Kelly and sometimes mirroring the styles set forth by popular musicals of the time like Singin' in the Rain and the work of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.With these two ideas, Godard already has plenty to work with, but the only problem is that nothing seems to really gel together. Other than the fun of seeing Karina and Brialy exchange some unpredictable dialog, witness frequent Godard collaborator Raoul Coutard's cinematography, and see Godard's first uses of color in film along with the famous CinemaScope method of widescreen filmmaking, there is simply not much to the story that retained personal interest.Once again, Godard seems to get so wrapped up in doing everything differently that he seems to forget to have something to say, or forgets to make what he wants to say extractable and clear enough to identify. A Woman is a Woman may simply be a product of Godard getting to excited about taking part in a huge movement that went on to forever change cinema. He's excited, leave him be.Starring: Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.