One of the worst movies I've ever seen

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Problem: your family sit staring into their laps. Solution: Jean-Luc Godard. If this was the first movie I'd ever seen, it would be love at first sight. Sure its a simple tale of girl meets boy meets American musical meets Jean-Luc Godard, but watching this movie reminded me how fun Godard can me. His playfulness is really his best quality I think. The last few I've seen including Le Mepris have been too sour for my taste. A Woman is a Woman is fresh and fun. Godard pulls all kinds of tricks that I won't spoil; I think the other great value in him is that he surprises you. In 2015, Godard is perhaps the best man for our living rooms, in fact, because he will make people look up from their iDevices. Without spoiling anything, he has a penchant for disruptiveness that simply does not allow him to be a background noise, no matter how hard you try and ignore him. Particularly in this movie. Highly recommended. 5/5

Godard succeeded in making a film that is both pretentious and pathetic. It's almost a parody of itself. Full of cutesy absurd songs and dances, I was glad that I could see this on DVD and fast forward through the worst of it. I cannot think of anything that redeemed this film. The woman is an airhead who just wants to have a baby. As a striptease dancer, she seemed to have no knowledge of the responsibilities of motherhood and no awareness that motherhood would change her life. This is the kind of woman who thinks she's an adult just because she can have a child. She is a baby herself and likely to be a terrible mother. The men in the film are all idiots as well. The best thing I can say about this film is that perhaps Godard is trying to show the worst of humanity in hopes that pretentious people will recognize themselves and wise up. But I doubt that was his intention. The film seems to take itself seriously as an alternative avant-garde creation. I have enjoyed Godard films such as Alphaville, Breathless, Contempt, and Weekend. But this one was lousy...

After his acclaimed and highly influential debut feature Breathless (1960), the Nouvelle Vague director Jean-Luc Godard went on to make a couple of short films and The Little Soldier, his first collaboration with the Danish actress and his future wife Anna Karina. However, the latter film was initially banned in France and was not released until 1963, thus making the 1961 musical comedy A Woman Is a Woman Godard's second published feature effort. The film's release history aside, is it any good when seen in 2010?The core plot deals with a beautiful striptease dancer named Angela (Anna Karina) who lives with her boyfriend Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) in a top floor flat in Paris. Her biggest dream is to have a baby but he is reluctant and keeps avoiding the subject, often leading to arguing and bickering. Eventually an idea is brought up: perhaps Émile's friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) could help in the matter...I have heard some criticisms for Une Femme and was not thoroughly impressed by it either when I first saw it but after a rewatch it started feeling better like often happens to me. Typical for French New Wave, Godard does not allow his vision to be bound by the conventions of cinematic storytelling but instead freely utilizes various styles of presenting his ideas: music beginning and pausing abruptly in mid-scene, mixed-up text appearing on screen to describe the characters' emotions, almost absurd brief flashes of people dancing on a street, strangely changing coloured lights in a bathroom, talking directly to the camera...All this can (and does to a certain extent) feel like alienating and artificial trickery for the sake of weirdness but when viewed in the right mood it can also look very entertaining. It helps to know how the film is known as Godard's tribute to American musicals: from this perspective the exaggeratedly dramatic and often knowingly unfitting bursts of music, the wide camera movements and sudden flashes of dancing gain a context and do not seem so abrasive anymore. In the middle of experimenting, the basic plot always remains at hand, examining universal themes of mismatching expectations in a relationship and the general nature of men and women – with a twist, naturally. Even so, one can simply just enjoy the visuals, colours and music without pondering them too much since the film is clearly meant to be (and is) entertaining as well.The famous book title quarrel scene and the language jokes are pretty amusing but the most essential asset of Une Femme is the persona of Anna Karina in the titular role. Her girly and innocent charm ensures it is now difficult to think of anyone else playing the role, although Brialy and Belmondo are alright too. To wrap up, I understand many feel that one performance cannot save a film if everything else is annoying. Une Femme definitely has a risk of coming across that way and may raise a question about why the director made the movie the way he did. I am far from an expert on Godard's influences and intentions but judging simply from the joyous vibe the film sends, the answer may well be no more complex than "why not?"

This is my second Godard film, my first being "Breathless", and I must say I enjoyed this one much more simply for the film's vibrant use of color. As Godard's first color film, he didn't waste the opportunity to experiment with them, and used his color schemes to their fullest potentials. The costumes, lighting, and sets all explode from the screen in bright oranges, reds, purples, and blues; a very kaleidoscopic experience. I can only assume at this point that Godard is not one for traditional story structure and plot development. The film, using distinct French New Wave editing and sound mixing, kind of "dances" and "skips" around scenes and dialogue, making the film more about the pure experience of cinema than delving into some kind of serious story or character arch. Some might see it as immature or pretentious, and it may very well be that, but it's so much fun to watch and so exciting for an aspiring filmmaker such as myself to see cinema at its perhaps most artistically indulgent.