35. A Woman is A Woman

It’s sort of a musical. It’s kind of a love triangle. It’s definitely a reason to find yourself deeply infatuated with Anna Karina (or at the very least, anyone in your circle who reminds you of 2 or 3 things you know about her).

It felt back in school like Godard and Truffaut were the Beatles and The Rolling Stones of French New Wave. Or if you prefer Mia Wallace’s framework, you’re an Elvis man or a Beatles man. You had to take a side for some arbitrary reason, and your choice supposedly said something about you. I definitely came down on the side of Godard.

He was cheeky. Playful. He had absorbed a lot about movies and wanted to make jokes for an audience that had also watched a lot of movies. There’s a fine line in some of his films between what works in general and what works best if you get the reference.

Put something like this toward one end of the spectrum, and toward the other end you might see something like Schmigadoon. Both know a lot about musicals and what audiences expect from them, but while Schmigadoon gives the audience a knowing wink and some twists with the content, A Woman is A Woman twists the form and the expectations of what a musical is supposed to look and sound like.

Also contains one of my favorite arguments ever on film: Two characters who don’t want to talk to each other, so they use the titles of books on the shelf behind them to insult each other.