My Life to Live

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Audience Member This is the movie on which so many parodies of French cinema are based. It's a story about a disaffected young French woman (Anna Karina) who leaves her husband and infant son to pursue an acting career, but quickly realizes the difficulties inherent in her decision and resorts to prostitution on the Paris streets. Nana (Karina) at first works in a record store on the Champs-Élysées, always has a cigarette in her hand, went to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc in theaters, and always seems to have a shot of the Seine framing her profile in the background while she sits, woefully, on the edge of a boutique hotel bed — okay, maybe that last part was only one scene, but it was so perfectly Gallic that the only thing that would've made it more French would've been the "John" actually wanting to have the ménage a trois. Raoul (Saddy Rebbott) explaining the ins-and-outs of the business to Nana while scenes of her showcasing her experiences as a prostitute was the first time the film really grabbed my attention. I found it cumbersome to constantly be looking at the back of characters' heads while they talked to each other in cafes and bars. The ending, where Nana is suddenly shot and killed during a transaction gone wrong (Nana was the transaction, from one pimp to another) and "FIN" flashes on the screen, is the cherry on top of the French New Wave sundae. Vivre Sa Vie is definitely a must-see for a cinephile (or Francophile), as it is a bedrock for one of the most influential movements in cinematic history, but it lacks a certain je ne sais pas for the average viewer; I couldn't help but roll my eyes when our protag-prostitute begins discussing philosophy a propos of nothing with a stranger (Brice Parain) in a café. Oh, the French. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review william k Intense and intricate tale of a downward spiral, all told straightforwardly in chapters and in an almost exhilarated style, enhaced by Anna Karina's marvelously convincing and mesmerizing performance is arguably one of Godard's greatest masterpieces. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member "Vivre sa Vie" triumphantly demonstrates Godard's talent for bold, experimental stylizations, rendered all the more impressive in the employment of a riveting and thought provoking character study that holds our attention through the entirety of its short duration. We ponder the inscrutable complexity of the central character, all the while sharing the restless camera's search for some kind of revelatory mannerism. We hope in vain to scrape the surface of one of cinema's most mysterious and strangely empathetic characters, and we respect the film's wise refusal to explain her away in terms of comfortably simple truisms. Although the film wears its age on its sleeve and certain passages seem a tad labored and pedantic, Godard generally avoids pretension by brazenly announcing his uninhibited intentions through the film's first transfixing shots. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review william d Back in 1962 I suppose this was considered avant garde. For me, sixty years later, it was just boring. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review renaldo d Godard, has a unique storytelling technique, although he considers his way of representing his scenes to be radical, this is one of the best films he made Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review William L Many films once considered dangerously radical gradually find their potency fade with time, as tastes evolve and the medium finds new ways to innovate. Godard is one director who still seems to have never fallen into this trap; his films still retain a distinctly modern taste more than half a century later. It feels like one of his more accessible films (revolving virtually entirely around a single focal character and her independence, or inability to maintain it), but I can't shake the notion that there is plenty more to dissect. With continuous references to cinema, literature, and philosophy, Vivre sa Vie seems ripe for subtext, though its continuous stream of references almost make the film seem unsure about itself, as if referencing a library by only reviewing the titles on the spines of the books (given Godard's critical background though, I doubt this is the most likely scenario). I do take issue with the ending, in which Karina's Nana is struck by bullets from two different gunman in an exchange gone wrong, possibly indicating her ultimate inability to control her destiny despite superficial authority over her own, small actions. What her stumbling ends up looking like instead is a bizarre parody of a Three Stooges skit. (4/5) Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/27/20 Full Review Read all reviews

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