Film Review

A Woman is A Woman 

I have watched quite a few films throughout these 7 weeks. The film I choose to talk about is “A woman is a woman”. As the film said it right at the end with Emile (one of the main characters) summing up, “I don’t know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it’s a masterpiece”, I truly felt the same way when I finished watching this film.

“A woman is a woman” is directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1961. The story is about Angela (Anna Karina) who wants a baby so badly, but her boyfriend Emile (Jan-Clause Brialy) doesn’t want to. At the same time Emile best friend, Alfred (Belmondo), is constantly insisting that he is in love with Angela, and he will do anything for her to show how he loves her. Eventually, Angela uses Alfred to have a baby and get Emile jealous by sleeping with him. However, she is so regretful and tells Emile about this. At last, Emile forgives her and in order to say the baby (if there is one) is his, not Alfred’s, they have sex at the end as well.

 Alfred, Angela and Emile

There are quite a lot of wisecracks in the film, like when Emile riding an actual bike in the house, Angela over-cooks the dinner and talking Emile into choosing to eat something else…etc. These funny jokes are what made this is an enjoyable film rather than just an “arty” film. Furthermore, there are some clever scenes such as Emile and Angela are not speaking to each other due to an argument. However, they are communicating by covering little bit of words from a book/books. I find it interesting and entertaining compared with any other film I have watched.

Besides, I like the way the actors suddenly made eye contact with the camera, as if they were talking to the audiences. For example, Angela winked at “us” and Both Angela and Emile bowed to us before they argued. These happened quite a few times throughout the film. By connecting us to the film, it was like we were not just watching it, but involving in it.

Godard also used the song sung by Angela in the strip club at the start as a thread through the film, which reappeared right at the end before Angela told Emile that she had sex with Alfred. This closely knitted the start and the end of the film because all the words in the song happened to become true. 

The way Godard used the camera from the perspective of one of the characters eyes (he did it at least with both Angela at the start and Emile at the end), is really striking. This made us identify ourselves with one of the characters in the film and as such we became part of the film.