Une femme est une femme est une femme

Une Femme est un Femme

Director: Jean Luc Godard
Cast: Anna Karina (Angela), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Alfred) and Jean-Calude Briarly (Emile)
Country: Italy/France
Language: French
Year of production: 1961
Runtime: 85 minutes
Quotes:

Alfred Lubitsch: "Answer yes, and I owe you 100 francs. Answer no, and you owe me 100, okay?"
Bar Owner: "Okay."
Alfred Lubitsch: "Here's the question: Can you loan me 100 francs?"

Angela: "We should boycott women who don't cry."

Emile: "I'm not sure if it's a comedy or a tragedy, but it's a masterpiece."

Une femme est une femme is a musical without singing, a theatrical pièce behind the camera. In semantic terms, this comedy is a delightful portrait of the gentle sex as seen by Godard who skillfully plays with the commonplaces orbiting around men and women’s intrinsically opposite nature, where women say the opposite of what they think, and men are uncomplicated, plain-spoken, sometimes insensitive but frank.

Staged in an artistically experimental fashion is the quarreling relationship between Angela and Emile. Godard’s focus is shifted on Angela, a professional striptease, whose inventive performances recall the glorious American musicals. In her private life, Angela is a clumsy, sexy, instinctive, melancholic and impish woman-in-love, whose juvenile and naïve manners remind the eccentric Holly Golightly (aka Audrey Hepburn) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or the lovely and vivacious Corrie Bratter (aka Jane Fonda) in BareFoot in the Park. *Flushed* by strong maternal feelings, Angela tries, in different crafty ways, to persuade his inattentive boyfriend to conceive a baby. No way. He is not remotely interested in it. Emile’s portrayal can be liquidating with a couple adjectives: he is in love but undemanding and rather indifferent to his woman's *paturnias*. Theatre within the theatre, self quotations and disruption of the scenic illusion are all devices adding entertainment to their raws, whose playful dynamics develope in their small and quirky flat with theatrical symmetry. Angela’s melodramatic reactions and Emile’s careless counter-reactions are presented with remarkable laughable effects.

At last, Angela is compelled to use the ultimate seductive trap to reach her objective: arousing her partner’s jealousy. "Tu es in-humane"--A surrendered Emile states at the very end. "No, je suis une-femme"--She defends herself playing along the line with a wily word pan. ;o )