My Life to Live

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Alain E It feels sacrilegious to grade so low a film that has entered the canon, but today in my opinion, its saving grace is Anna Karina’s beauty that dominates almost every frame. This is not a discourse on prostitution. Not every underpaid sales girl decides to turn tricks instead. The discussion on philosophy and so forth hardly feel profound today. Amongst this period of Godard I prefer Breathless and later on, Hail Mary. Voila! Rated 1.5/5 Stars •  Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 08/02/25 Full Review Will G A great French film. This is my favorite Jean Luc Godard film. It is about a woman in Paris who wanted to be an actress, but she becomes a Prostitute. Lots of great scenes of France. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/22/25 Full Review 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 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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