Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens: My Life to Live

VIVRE SA VIE: A Film in 12 Scenes / Film en Douze Tab- leaux (Jean- Luc Godard, France, 1962, 85 minutes) Godard spent entire films sending sem- aphore-like messages about the corruption of Western consumer society, but My Life to Live communicates more, and without a single quote from Chairman Mao. -- Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ****** ***** When people say they like Jean-Luc Godard's 1960s work, what they usually mean is that they like Godard in conjunction with An- na Karina and D.P. Raoul Coutard. To be fair, they may also be thinking about Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, Pierrot le Fou) or Jean-Pierre Léaud (Masculin Féminin, La Chinoise), but Vivre Sa Vie belongs as much to Karina as to Godard. If not more so. Though Karina still had a career after her personal and profession- al break from the filmmaker--they married after 1961's A Woman Is a Woman and divorced during 1965's Pierrot le Fou--she never hit the same heights again, though the one-time model did go on to work with such major talents as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Luchino Visconti. Arguably, Godard peaked during the same period, 19- 61-1967, in which they made eight films together. That isn't to dis- miss his work with other actresses in the decades to come, but it's the '60s, i.e. the Kari- na Era, that secur- ed his reputation. In Godard biographer Richard Brody's essay "Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens," which accompanies the Criterion Collec- tion DVD, he writes, "Pierrot Le Fou was an angry accusa- tion against Anna Karina, and a self-pitying keen at how she destroyed him and his work." I couldn't say whether Godard signs off on that reading, but Karina offers nothing but praise when she speaks about her former spouse in interviews. Luc Lagier's revealing 2007 documentary Godard, L'Amour, La Poesie also comes with the Pierrot DVD. In it, Karina ex- plains, "I can't speak badly of him! He was my teacher, my love, my husband, my Pygmalion. He taught me everything." Though Pierrot le Fou ends in death and destruction, Vivre Sa Vie is a more somber affair (further, Coutard shot it in black and white rather than Technicolor). Godard disorients the audience from the start with backlit close-ups of Karina before revealing anything about her character. Af- ter the credit sequence, Nana (Karina) parts from her hus- band, Paul (Andre Labarthe), and by extension, their child. Godard keeps the Brechtian distance going by shooting the scene from the back, but the eeriest part is that they speak to each other as director and actress (or father and daught- er). Paul accuses her of "parroting" everything he says, while Nana claims he never lets her speak for herself. Though it's rarely wise to read too much biography into a fiction film, Godard isn't exactly playing his cards close to his chest. As it turns out, Nana would prefer to act, but works instead in a record store. Deeply in debt, she loses her apartment, but doesn't tell Paul or ask to borrow any money. Instead, she drowns her sor- rows in a screening of Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Passion de Jean- ne d'Arc, during which a man puts his arm around her shoulder. He bought her ticket, so she accepts the gesture, but refuses to allow him to go home with her. She has her standards, but as her situ- ation becomes more precarious, they melt away. (Interestingly, French-Canadian helmer Léa Pool uses Vivre Sa Vie in 1999's Emporte-moi / Set Me Free, much as Godard uses Jeanne.) One afternoon, while walking down a Parisian boulevard fre- quented by streetwalkers, another man asks Nana, "How about it?" Pause. "Oui," she responds quietly, and a prostitute is born. (Pool's underage pro- tagonist tries the same thing, but is prevented from taking the plunge.) Godard, by way of Coutard, continues to alternate between back shots, fade-to-blacks, and close-ups in which Karina stares into the camera- like Maria Falconetti in the Dreyer film or Jean Seberg in Breathless. Later, another trick accuses Nana of "parroting," which brings up an in- teresting point. Though sometimes accused of misogyny (most recently by Richard Brody), Godard takes this parade of judgmental men to task. If Nana isn't a heroine on the order of Joan of Arc, he's still in her corn- er. No wonder Susan Sontag loved this film. Whether it qualifies as feminist or not is open to debate, but I submit that it's not misogynist. Further, many critics be- lieve Karina gives her best performance in Vivre Sa Vie. I haven't seen enough of her post-Godard work to say for sure, but it's the best of the films I've seen, and she was never a slouch in the acting department. It's worth adding that the Denmark-born Hanne Kar- en Blarke Bayer was never a slouch in the singing or dancing departments either. She doesn't sing here as she does in Pierrot le Fou, but she does dance to a jukebox, anticipating 1964's Bande à Part (Band of Outsiders). So, Vivre Sa Vie isn't a total downer (Michel Legrand's subtle score, which plays only during the chapter headings, adds some welcome re- lief). A melodrama dressed in new wave garb, the film proves Godard had a soft side. Karina would continue to bring that softness to the sil- ver screen, while her ex-husband and greatest director would suc- cumb to the coldness that always attached itself to his work. Endnote: Part of the retrospective "Godard's '60s," Vivre Sa Vie, in a new 35mm print, plays SIFF Cinema through 8/28. (Incidentally, I suspect Fatih Akin used its structure as a model for the discrete scenes in The Edge of Heaven, which continues at The Varsity.) SIFF Cinema is located at 321 Mercer St. in McCaw Hall. For more information, please click here or call 206-633-7151. Images from Roger Ebert and OutNow!