11/09/10 - Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Vivre Sa Vie)

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Vivre Sa Vie) (1962, 80 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056663/

This was my first ever Jean-Luc Godard film and first French film since Diabolique from quite some time back. I really haven't seen many French films and this is mainly just a factor of me not seeing many foreign films and nothing against French cinema. Anyway, I figured Godard was the best French director to hit up this month to go along with the theme. I picked this over Breathless for the sole reason that it was shorter.

The film is broken into twelve little vignettes. Each is related to the others but they aren't scenes that strictly follow one another. The main character of the story though is Nana Kleinfrankenheim (Anna Karina) who struggles to pay her rent and eventually goes into prostitution. The only other prominent figure is her pimp Raoul played by Sady Rebbot.

This was my first look at the New Wave cinema of France from this time period. Suffice to say, if everything is like Vivre Sa Vie then I probably won't be checking much else out. Perhaps that was a bit harsh but this film just didn't strike a chord with me at all. There was a lot of reasons for this so I can't actually pinpoint a single one. First, there's the twelve vignettes thing. It's quirky and different and I don't think it contributes anything significant. I'm really not a huge fan of stuff like this that is different seemingly for only the sake of being different. Next, there's a couple scenes that seem to jump out compared to the others. One of these is when Raoul explains all the rules of prostitution to Nana. I don't get the point of this as it's not even remotely relevant to actual story. Again - I don't see what purpose (if any) this scene has. Another weird scene is the final scene where Nana talks philosophy. I get the impression that this is the most important scene in the film and the one that fans of the movie will often say as being their favorite. To me, it comes off as just a "deep" discussion thrown in somewhat haphazardly. I'm all for philosophical discussions when they fit naturally into the flow of the narrative - look at The Seventh Seal where Bergman works these in perfectly. Here, it's just random and sloppy the way it's placed.

The above list my biggest complaints, but I think Vivre Sa Vie does has quite a few positives. The biggest here to me is Karina's acting. Obviously Karina is beautiful and this works great for her role as a prostitute. But what she does that's the best to me as a viewer is her acting. Like I mentioned in my comments about Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Karina does a lot of acting "with her eyes." She has the perfect pouty look for her character and the predicament that Nana is in. It's little stuff like this from Karina that make her performance superb. Another good thing in Vivre Sa Vie is the ending. It's bleak and crushing. I didn't fully understand what was going on completely (I blame my failure at reading subtitles as opposed to Godard's directing) but after reading a bit, I see how the ending somewhat contradicts the free will statements of Nana from earlier. I guess this question on the existence of free will is a fundamental point the movie is trying to make which is a good one. I think if I watched the movie again I would do a better job at picking up on little lines, words, and symbolism throughout that contributed to this debate. From what I gathered in a short read up on the movie after I watched it, I'm pretty sure Vivre Sa Vie succeeds at giving this free will discussion point a nice and adequate treatment and that I just missed the nuances of it. For this reason, I clearly can't fault the movie for it (since it's my mistake), but rather list it as one of the positives.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. Vivre Sa Vie isn't a bad film, but I think by its nature it's very hit or miss. Unfortunately it was one of those miss films for me. I would recommend it to other people wanting to check out French cinema but with some caution. However, this still doesn't put me off Godard enough to not at least also give Breathless a watch hopefully this month.