A.k.a. A Woman is a Woman

D/S: Jean-Luc Godard. P: Carlo Ponti, Georges de Beauregard. Cast: Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy. UK dist (DVD): Studio Canal.

The Pop-Art colour scheme and ‘scope framing of Paris locations make this one of the more visually appealing Godards of the Sixties – Jean-Luc had just begun the radical colour-experimentation phase that produced Le Mépris (1963) and Pierrot le Fou (1965), amongst others – and it’s a pleasure to watch a Nouvelle Vague entry that’s not afraid to paint pretty pictures. As you’d expect from Godard, his approach is very hit-or-miss. He takes great delight in tearing apart the conventions of contemporary filmmaking, with needle-drop music cues cutting in (and out) abruptly in the middle of scenes, foley effects arbitrarily appearing and disappearing with each changing shot, actors cheerily breaking the fourth wall… You know the sort of thing.

And it’s a lot of fun, much of the time. Godard playfully lampoons even the behavioural tropes of the rom-com: because the genre demands that hero and heroine must always disport themselves in a determinedly light-hearted, zany fashion, Godard has Anna Karina’s lover enter a dialogue scene riding a bicycle – inside their apartment. Because the genre demands the male romantic lead demonstrate a careless intimacy by lighting a brace of his-and-hers cigarettes with a single match, Godard inverts the convention by having him use two matches to light a single cigarette – his own. Because the permissive age demands some racy content, Godard offers a borderline-surreal strip club sequence, where one fully-clothed danseuse passes behind a pillar to emerge instantaneously nude (but for an elaborate Sioux headdress) on the other side: the impossible passes without comment. And because the rom-com format demands that screen relationships must always be comprehensible to the lowest common denominator, Godard actually freezes the action to spell out, in big block letters, exactly how each of the characters is feeling at key moments.

Of course, it can be a short step from fun to boredom, and the lack of anything beyond a back-of-an-envelope plot structure does mean the attention wanders now and then. And the conspicuous presence of the director, reminding us “Psst – c’est un film!” with every calculated trick, occasionally borders on the tiresome. But the inventiveness is usually sharp enough to make it worth the effort; and Anna Karina is genuinely stunning. Surprisingly, Belmondo barely registers as the rival love interest, though he supplies one of the film’s most amusing moments: during a café discussion of Vera Cruz, he interjects “Starring my pal Burt Lancaster”, and gives an enormous cheesy grin – straight into camera. Magnifique.