Vivre sa vie is
split novelistically into twelve distinct parts, each detailing Nana’s (Anna
Karina) descent into prostitution through economic necessity and what happens
after. No other Godard film, to my knowledge, is as committed to realism as
this one is, both social and emotional and in terms of form. In some ways then,
it can be considered the truest of Godard’s films and the saddest.
Nana
is a young woman who harbours ambitions to be an actress. These dreams have not
come into being and Nana, dissatisfied, leaves her husband Paul (Andre S. Labarthe) and tries to
make it on her own. She has no cash and no one she knows can lend her any money
– she has to cadge a cinema ticket of Paul and her landlady locks her out of
her apartment. Following an unsuccessful attempt at petty crime, Nana is forced
to take up prostitution.
Karina
gives her best performance for Godard here, playing a woman who is still young
but who knows even at this early stage that she has failed to do what she wants
to do with her life. Karina brings out this frustration and disappointment and,
after she becomes a prostitute, self-loathing brilliantly. In one scene, Nana
rambles about her newfound economic independence and her responsibility for
herself, pretending that she is happy, only for her face to suddenly dissolve
into silent, choking unhappiness in the instant that she runs out of words.
Then she silently watches a couple across the café. These two moments together
are amongst the most moving that Godard ever achieved. We do not know what Nana
is thinking when she looks at this couple – it could be that she is thinking of
her own loneliness, it could be that, since the man seems to be a little cold,
that she is thinking about her comfort depends on such taciturn men, showing
her feelings of independence as a delusion. What is significant in this moment
is that Godard holds back on the tricks and delivers a ‘straight’ moment of
performance and drama.
Other
parts of the film are more experimental, but the experimentation is muted here
in favour of a depiction of the state of prostitution in France and the lot for
the women who do it. One part of the film belongs squarely to documentary –
Anna questions her pimp Raoul (Sady Rebbot) about the laws and practices of prostitution and
he replies coldly and scientifically about how the job works and the laws that
need to be followed. It is a dehumanising sequence, displaying how stark the
options are for those who do this job. Godard frequently films Karina in
close-up in profile and in low light, detailing stages of her descent in her
face. This culminates in a scene towards the end of the film in which Godard
reads in voiceover Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ to Nana, a story and the theme of
the film about a man who is an artist and the woman he loves. A brief insight
into their marriage (on the rocks at this point) and an examination of how the
films have got in the way of their love. It is also another example of a woman
subjugated by a man. The film concludes then with a stark and sudden,
powerfully undramatic sequence detailing Nana’s betrayal by Raoul and her death
at the hands of two uncaring men. The film ends with her body on the street,
the camera suddenly tilting down, giving Nana an ascension that nevertheless
must remain ruthlessly in the gutter.
The
battle between Nana’s emotions and the reality of her existence plays out
underneath the main current of the film. We see Nana’s trying to overcome her
self-disgust – just as we see attempts to live as if nothing is wrong despite
the embarrassment of asking friends for money and trying to hide from her
landlady. Her moments of happiness are rare and usually tainted. She dances
alone to some music in a pool hall and despite her loneliness and the fact that
the three men ignore her. We watch her dance, not caring if it’s sad, happy
despite everything – and then Godard cuts to her POV – we see now the bare,
ugly room, the unpleasantness of her journey and the faces of the men who
ignore her. Like the singing scene in Une Femme est une femme, Godard shows the disconnect between how the character
feels and where the character is, though here we are left more with the
impression of denial rather than irrepressible joy. In another moment, we see
her happy with a young man, a man she incidentally picks up at the pool hall.
She talks of ending her life as a prostitute and returning to normality and yet
we know she won’t be happy. The young man refuses to leave the apartment and
prefers to read ‘The Oval Portrait’ to her from a book he has just happened to
find. The only time Nana is happy without consequence is, intriguingly, when
she goes to the cinema to see Dreyer’s The
Passion of Joan of Arc and experiences a transcendent moment of (self-)recognition.
Vivre sa vie was
an experimental film – its direct sound, long takes and lateral, arbitrary but
direct camerawork were rarely seen – but here the technique and the form of the
film work towards and heighten the film’s tragedy, rather than commenting
ironically on it. Vivre sa vie is one
of Godard’s most moving and soberest films, one in which it seems that Godard’s
primary focus was on his wife’s performance and the plight of the prostitute.
It would be foolish to read the film as feminist necessarily, but it does
recognise the difficulties of an economically deprived woman who wants to be
independent in a man’s world. In one moment, Nana is paid by a client who then
wants another woman. Nana gets the woman for him and when she asks what she is
to do, she is told to do nothing and just remain seated. Nana sits,
immobilised, in low lighting and in profile and when the film’s theme plays, it
is a quietly heart-breaking image of a woman in invisible chains.
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