It’s always something of an experience when you discover a new side of an artist you’re normally agnostic towards. I’ve often expressed my troubled feelings towards Jean-Luc Godard, a director whose importance is undeniable, but often tends to be eclipsed by his self-referential style that can often be analogous to some deeply-embedded arrogance that gave him his reputation as one of the most polarizing figures of the French New Wave, and in the process the most notable in terms of cultural cache. He’s not a filmmaker I dislike, but rather one whose work doesn’t often inspire any passion when I look into them – so you can imagine the surprise I felt when it turns out that A Woman Is a Woman (French: Une femme est une femme)is one of his better efforts. By no means a perfect film, or one completely void of some of Godard’s more unfortunate quirks, but rather a piece that sees him delivering exactly what his reputation suggests he should – a playful, funny and insightful comedy about society and the people that populate it, one that finds Godard doing something fundamentally different from what he’d go on to do, and one of the few times that his pretensions not only do not detract from the film, but actively bolster it in many instances. There are a few aspects of A Woman Is a Woman that make it quite a fun film, especially since it sees the director doing something that seems a lot more easygoing and far from the trite proclamations of his own genius that would define the early stages of his career, and a variety of peripheral elements that make it one of his better achievements, even if it often comes dangerously close to falling victim to its own audacity, but never quite abandons the audience while doing it.

Godard does something here that he should’ve done more regularly – he understood what worked the most in his early films, which was putting his artistic and romantic partner Anna Karina in the centre of the film. A Woman Is a Woman gives the iconic French actress the chance to show all the reasons that made her one of the screen’s most enigmatic and brilliant stars. Many of the director’s films during this period carry criticisms that they’re mostly about brooding young men who are defined by a limp hypermasculinity and burning rage fueled by their delusions of artistic and intellectual grandeur, and where women are treated as somewhat secondary to the plot, objects of desire that may have some personality, but often fit into a preconceived vision of what a female character in Godard’s films are supposed to be, particularly early on. This is a reductive definition, and even his more hardened critics can’t deny that he often wrote interesting roles for female collaborators – A Woman Is a Woman is one such film, and in casting his muse (or rather, creating the character alongside her), Godard manages to be self-reflective on his artistic stylings, almost as if he is pre-empting a run of films that would place women secondary to the protagonist, even if they were a lot more interesting than their roles would seem in theory. It’s a tricky concept, and doesn’t do justice to either A Woman Is a Woman or any of Godard’s work in general to reduce it to such a level – but it’s certainly a topic worth discussing, and which is somewhat remedied by what this film is conveying.

Whatever the impetus for A Woman Is a Woman was, it’s clear that Godard and Karina were having fun – going from his audacious debut Breathless, a brooding and bleak existential romance,the year before to this, a more playful and exuberant comedy styled after the incredibly popular romances being produced in America in the 1950s, was a bold jump in both form and content, and a massive reason why A Woman Is a Woman is such a compelling film. We often tend to forget that the French New Wave wasn’t an insular movement, but rather one started and propelled by cinephiles who picked up a camera themselves. There’s a lot of inspiration taken from American film here, and Godard isn’t afraid to let us know where his influences lay (albeit he often makes it glaringly obvious that he does indeed believe himself to have impeccable taste), which has often resulted in either delightful references in other films, or more overwrought moments of quoting from other works. A Woman Is a Woman is not immune to this, but rather uses this principle exceptionally well – Godard inserts sequences that may not make much sense out of context (or occasionally even with some understanding of where this particular point is coming from), but converge into something quite effective when we realize that A Woman Is a Woman isn’t necessarily about the plot, which is relatively scant and not all that impressive (an exotic dancer desperately wants a baby, but when her boyfriend refuses, she seeks the help of his best friend, and hilarity ensues), but rather the moments that occur throughout it – the small stories, or moments of unhinged absurdity – all of which lend the film credence as a work of both metafiction (this is a film that often comments on itself, which isn’t always easy to accomplish) and as a profoundly entertaining piece on its own.

However, there are some problems in A Woman Is a Woman – the characterization of the leads often leaves something to be desired, especially in terms of the characters played by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy, who blur into one another and become essentially the same person. There is a chance this was intentional (and if so, the film does deserve some kudos for essentially inverting expectations), but chances are that Godard just struggled to put together two very compelling characters. However, this only means that Karina’s performance was stronger, and despite some of the flaws underpinning her character, she’s delivering such a masterful performance that feels like the kind that makes someone a star. She’s firing on all cylinders in A Woman Is a Woman, managing to be both funny and profound in equal measure, and finding certain nuances in the character that makes Angela such a delight to see on screen. It’s undeniable that this film succeeds because of the wonderful work Karina is doing throughout it – she’s the beating heart of the entire piece, and without her exploring all aspects of the character with such charming ferocity, A Woman Is a Woman would simply not have succeeded. The definition of a star vehicle, Godard is strangely generous in how he hones in on Karina’s character, always keeping the camera firmly on her, capturing every gesture, expression and subtle glance that makes this such a deeply compelling performance, and all the more proof that Karina was really such a powerhouse of an actress in any role.

Godard is one of the few filmmakers who can have his film’s most climactic scene end with a character looking at the camera and boldly stating “I don’t know if this is a comedy, or a tragedy. But I know it’s a masterpiece” – and perhaps such a statement is a bit presumptuous, since A Woman Is a Woman isn’t quite on that level, but it all contributes to the general sense of well-placed arrogance that interweaves with Godard’s ambitions to make for quite a compelling film. It’s a film that doesn’t need to be ambitious in terms of its plot – it essentially stands as a pastiche of mid-century Hollywood comedies, with the rapid pace, upbeat music and irreverent sense of romance that are unrealistic but so deeply entertaining. Not necessarily one of Godard’s major works either, but rather one that sees him having some fun, putting together a simple romantic comedy that has some lovely moments, and ultimately creates something that is perhaps too safe to actually make much of an impression after the fact – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some genuinely enjoyable moments peppered throughout it, and if anything, A Woman Is a Woman is worth seeking out for two reasons alone: to see Godard doing something a bit more carefree and lighter, and an opportunity to see the magnetic Anna Karina command the screen and display her immense talents in a film that genuinely has undying interest to her. Not much else can be said for this film, and perhaps not the best indicator of the director’s style, but one of the better uses of it.