Vivre Sa Vie (2006)

MY LIFE TO LIVE is a drama about the degradation of a young life.A beautiful Parisian in her early twenties, leaves her husband and their son hoping to become an actress. She's a rebellious young woman who is prone to delusions. She elects to earn money as a prostitute. Soon she has a pimp, however, she meets an intelligent young man ...Mr. Godard has showed us the life of a young woman in the 12 short episodes. She has got a scar on her body or her soul in each of the episodes. A young person who is on the verge of despair, wants a better life. However, like most of the characters from the French New Wave, she is looking for something that is not precisely determined.The dialogues are direct and filled with dark tones. A depressive attitude is an expression of sincerity in this film. A technique and frames are quite strange. I had an impression that the protagonists flee from a camera in certain scenes. The story is intimate but not a quite tragic. Close-ups of the face of the major actress leave a strong impression of confusion and ignorance.Anna Karina as Nana Kleinfrankenheim is a lonely woman, who is lost in her own pathos and her inability to adapt to the real world. She is an outsider and every new experience strikes a blow to her self-confidence. In the end, she is cute and helpless thing who found meaning (love), for which she will not have time.This is very interesting, but not convincing.

VIVRE SA VIE is a film by French auteur Jean-Luc Godard, one of those art-house directors that people always bang on about. I'm afraid that I don't share the same sensibilities, although I try to see the films if they're showing on TV just so I know what's being talked about. VIVRE SA VIE is a low budget black and white production about a woman whose promiscuity sees her descend into prostitution, and I'm afraid it's a film which left me cold.This kind of story was previously done in Emile Zola's famous novel NANA, which brought to life the seediness of 19th century Paris, and by comparison VIVRE SA VIE simply isn't up to scratch. The characters are subdued and bored and thus come across as dull in themselves. I didn't care or feel sympathy for any of them. The film is presented in twelve vignettes but they're all very similar and the viewer doesn't really learn or understand much from watching. It all seems so trivial, a shame when important subject matters are crying out for treatment.

watching this movie of 1962 in 2016, one should interpret and asses the movie accordingly. this may contain Spoiler . At first the story seems to be an usual story of a girl pursuing a carrier in cinema while falling to the prostitution. To me it is an in-depth analysis of a woman's life. the prostitution as an occupation is the medium to make this analysis. the scene where they missed the movie and she has to wait her boss talking to one of his friend and because she gets bored and the friend of her boss childishly tries to cheer her up, she dance is so innocent and breathe-taking.

So far in my exploration of Jean-Luc Godard I have remained in his masterful decade of the '60s, and as a result I've been treated mostly to films that are fun and exciting, toying with structure and cinematic conventions. Vivre Sa Vie fits firmly in his career, but it's also a surprising contrast to his other work which I have seen so far. Even in his more narratively focused Breathless, there's still a very cinematic quality to it, portraying a sense of freedom of expression and romanticism. Vivre Sa Vie strips away all of that and elects instead to present an almost documentarian look into the descent of the young Nana (Anna Karina, naturally) into prostitution.The structure of the film is split into twelve episodes that bring us through Nana's progression. She's a young Parisian girl working at a record shop who wants to be in the movies, but needs money to pay her rent. It's a simple story, but the way Godard tells it is what makes it so intriguing. He presents Nana as an object of desire to many but an object of interest to very few. The men around her aren't interested in what she has to say, they put up with her words in order to get to what they are really looking for, her body and ways to profit off of it.Karina's dance scene is classic Godard, but his unique approach to this film makes it much less freeing than in his other works. The dance in Band of Outsiders is a jaunty display of youthful rhythm and A Woman Is A Woman is loaded with fun numbers, but here the art of dance takes on an entirely different, and much more tragic, meaning. For Nana, it's a desperate plea to get attention using the only thing that she knows how, her body. In regards to the film, Godard stated, "The few episodes in her life that I am going to film are very likely of little interest to others, but most important to Nana," and I feel that he accomplished his goal very well here.These episodes to most would seem relatively mundane, just normal days in the life of a prostitute, conversations and interactions of the daily routine, but for Nana they mean so much more. Her trip to the cinema to see The Passion of Joan of Arc has become almost iconic in Godard's legacy, and for good reason. In this moment Godard removes us from our state as voyeurs and instead plays us into Nana's position. He displays Nana as the film viewer, presenting the kind of emotional impact and life revelation that cinema can have on someone and getting the audience to completely empathize with her. Nana becomes the audience and, as a result, the audience becomes her.The descent into prostitution is intriguing here, thanks in large part to the captivating and expressive work by Godard's muse, but Godard's metaphor for the life of an actress is also a fascinating theme that one can't help but notice. Displays Nana as the prostitute in her world of pimps and photographers, people passing her back and forth like a piece of meat, it certainly seems that he's making a statement on the film industry and the nature of exploitation in how actors are treated. They are passed back and forth by directors, producers, even the audience, and used for their image, much like a prostitute, and it's up to the actress to keep themselves in tact. As the opening quote of the film states, "Lend yourself to others. But give yourself to yourself".I've seen people refer to the film as the "morning after" state of the Godard/Karina dynamic and I think that's an interesting way of looking at it. They had collaborated several times before, and would collaborate for many years after still, but Vivre Sa Vie seems to be the most intimate and exposing look into the relationship between the two of them as lovers and the relationship between actor and director at large. It's a very introspective journey that Godard takes us on, and certainly one of the most impressive I've seen from him yet.