Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Steve Pulaski A Woman is a Woman catches the elusive and acclaimed director Jean-Luc Godard in a relatively good mood as he centers this particular story around the makings of a musical, a staged affair, and communication through the use of various book titles for his sophomore directorial effort. Hot on the trails of his debut film Breathless, released in 1960, Godard followed up a year later with A Woman is a Woman right before all the acclaim and renowned remarks about his influence on film became relatively ubiquitous in film circles. I only note this because with A Woman is a Woman, there's an assumption that Godard is still saying what he wants to say with it, whereas something like Film Socialisme, at this time, his most recently-released directorial effort in 2011, that feels like he is compiling a wide-variety of images together that have no cohesion just to see if people will still say he's a genius and hold his work to high art.If you can't already imply, I found Godard's follow-up to the endlessly intriguing French New Wave-staple Breathless to be pretty lukewarm and underwhelming. I did not expect A Woman is a Woman to be anything like his debut feature, mainly because I have yet to see two Godard films that are heavily alike in terms of what they portray, however, I did expect this particular film to have insight and intrigue to its material. With this film, it feels like Godard is throwing numerous things against the wall - be it ideas, commentary, characters, relationships, etc - and not particularly trying to tie them together in any way. The result is a massive conglomerate of ideas that are not fully-realized and a tedious cinematic affair at just eighty-four minutes long.Godard's wife during the sixties and frequent collaborator Anna Karina is the main character here, as beautiful and as playful as ever as Angéla, an exotic dancer in a relationship with French yuppie Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy). However, their relationship seems to be predicated off of the likes of arguing about whether or not to have a child, eventually resorting to their assorted library of books to continue their argument in a unique but quickly-tedious method of storytelling. In the meantime, Émile's good friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is more than willing to have a child with Angéla. This sets off an even greater fire-storm of arguments that eventually lead Angéla to agree to have sex with Alfred in order to conceive a child.Godard seems to be trying to do two major things with A Woman is a Woman. One, is find another way to tell a conventional story, this time by the use of intrusive but intriguing title cards along with the ever-present book titles held up by the characters. This creates a less linear but a more refreshing way to guide along a pretty tame and unremarkable story, even if it isn't completely successful. The second is its take on the typical American musical, referencing the likes of Gene Kelly and sometimes mirroring the styles set forth by popular musicals of the time like Singin' in the Rain and the work of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.With these two ideas, Godard already has plenty to work with, but the only problem is that nothing seems to really gel together. Other than the fun of seeing Karina and Brialy exchange some unpredictable dialog, witness frequent Godard collaborator Raoul Coutard's cinematography, and see Godard's first uses of color in film along with the famous CinemaScope method of widescreen filmmaking, there is simply not much to the story that retained personal interest.Once again, Godard seems to get so wrapped up in doing everything differently that he seems to forget to have something to say, or forgets to make what he wants to say extractable and clear enough to identify. A Woman is a Woman may simply be a product of Godard getting to excited about taking part in a huge movement that went on to forever change cinema. He's excited, leave him be.Starring: Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.

Benedict_Cumberbatch Only a few played with film the way Godard did. "A Woman Is a Woman", his first film in color, is a "musical-comedy" about Angela (the beautiful, underrated Anna Karina, Godard's then wife/muse, in perhaps her most iconic role), an exotic dancer who wants to have a baby. As her boyfriend, Émile Récamier (the late Jean-Claude Brialy) doesn't like the idea, she goes after his friend Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo). However, Angela's desire is just a pretext for Godard to explore his visual, intellectual, musical and, of course, cinematic games (in one scene, Belmondo meets Jeanne Moreau at a café and asks "How's 'Jules & Jim" coming along?") with this adorably inventive, amusing and sexy ride. One of his most accessible films, "A Woman Is a Woman" is a good example of why Godard was such a revolutionary, and a great introduction to his filmography. Oh, and to hear Karina singing "Chanson d'Angela" and Charles Aznavour's "Tu t'laisses Aller" is a slice of movie heaven. 10/10.

Dennis Littrell Godard is beginning to grow on me. Maybe it's because I'm watching his films from the sixties, made when I was a teenager in France, and the nostalgia appeals to me. Maybe it's because his work seems free and easy, uncontrived, almost amateurish compared to some other famous film makers. Or maybe it's just that I like this particular pretty girl he features.She is pretty, gangly Anna Karina starring as Angela, an exotic dancer who is madly in love and wants to have a baby. Godard has a lot of fun with her, encouraging her to mug for the camera, getting her to do movements that cause her to trip and look not just gangly and very young like a pre-adolescent, but even clumsy--and then to leave the shots in the film, probably telling her, "This is a comedy. You need to be not just beautiful, but funny, warm, vulnerable." Karina does manage a lot of vulnerability. Her exotic act including her singing is...well, there are usually only a handful of customers in the joint and so her skills are probably appropriately remunerated. Again this is intentional since Godard wants her to be just an ordinary girl without any great talent, someone with whom the girls in the audience can identify. But the irony is that the girl must needs be at least pretty. Karina is more than pretty. She is exquisite with her long shapely limbs and her gorgeous countenance.One of the compelling nostalgic elements is the way women did their eyes in the sixties: so, so overdone! Although I thought that look was oh so sexy then, today I would like to clean the blue, blue--or is it purple?--eye shadow and the black, black mascara off of Karina's face and see her au naturel! But it is the sixties in Paris--Gay Paree, Paris in the Spring, the City of Light! Well, 1960 to be exact, which really is more like the fifties than the sixties if you know what I mean. Everything is so innocent, Ike still in the American White House, De Gaulle the triumphant hero of France. Algeria and Vietnam completely offstage of course--this is a romantic comedy. The German occupation, the horrific world war and its aftermath are distant memories for Angela and her friends who were only children then. Life is young, the girls are pretty, the boys are cute, prosperity is upon them. It's Godard's Paris. Life is playful. Life is fun. You tease and you have no real worries. The Cold War is of no concern. The 100,000 or so American troops still stationed in France to support the troops in Germany are not seen. But Godard's love affair with the mass American culture is there in little asides and jokes. Emile or Alfred (I forget which) asks Angela what she would like to hear on the jukebox. "Istsy-bitsy bikini," he offers. No. She wants Charles Aznavour. She wants romance and an adult love that leads to marriage and maternity.Angela's beloved is Emile played with a studied forbearance by an eternally youthful Jean-Claude Brialy. He doesn't want to father a baby, at least not yet. She pouts, she makes faces, she threatens, she burns the roast and drops the eggs, she crosses her arms, and she gives him the silent treatment. It doesn't work. He prefers to read the Worker's Daily. Ah, but will Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo, who seems intent on out boyish-ing Brialy) pull himself away from TV reruns of "Breathless" to do the job? Will she let him? Is Emile really so indifferent as to allow his friend carnal knowledge of his girlfriend? Is this a kind of threesome, a prelude to a menage a trois? Watch for a shot of Jeanne Moreau being asked how Truffaut's film Jules et Jim (1962) which she was working on at the time, is coming along, a kind of cinematic insider jest that Godard liked to include in his films. She gives a one word reply, "Moderato." See this for Anna Karina, and see her also in Godard's Band of Outsiders (1964) in which she looks even more teenager-ish than she does here. She is not a great actress, but she is wondrously directed by Godard who was then her husband.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Galina "Une femme est une femme" (1961) is the second Goddard's film – his dissection of a traditional Musical and Comedy. It may seem silly and naïve at times but it is a funniest and most enjoyable of his films that I've seen so far. A pretty stripper Angela (Anna Karina) wants a child. She decided to become a respectable bourgeois mother and wife but her dear husband Emil (Jean - Claude Briali) is categorically against her decision. He loves his wife but he loves his freedom even more, and the child means the end of freedom. Angela turns for help to Emil's friend, Alfred (Jean - Paul Belmondo). He is ready to do anything for Angela because he's been deeply and desperately in love with her ...But a woman is a woman and blessed is he who truly knows what she wants.7/10