UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME

Taking as his jumping off point the American musical-comedies of the 1950's, Godard then totally subverts them, following his debut masterpiece "Breathless" with something even more radical. "Une Femme est une Femme" is, on the one hand, Godard's most accessible film while being, at the same time, totally unconventional, even perversely so. It's like a home-movie in Cinemascope and colour and his use of colour and widescreen is up there with Minnelli and Sirk even as his script and his actors veer off into places his mentors would never have considered.

Anna Karina stars as the young stripper who wants to have a baby, either by Jean-Claude Brialy or Jean-Paul Belmondo, (she isn't too fussy), and she looks gorgeous. The camera loves her even if what she is doing up there on the screen might not quite approximate to 'acting' any more than what Godard is giving us could be called a typical film. This is the kind of movie that cemented his reputation and as many people hate it as love it. However, unlike many of his later films, (the out-and-out political ones), the last thing you could call this is boring.