A Woman Is a Woman (French: Une femme est une femme) (1961) Comedy? Think not. Drama? Too confused to care. Musical? Satire. Romance? She sleeps with best friend. Visual zest, but not much else. Tanka, literally "short poem", is a form of poetry consisting of five lines, unrhymed, with the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable format. #Tanka #PoemReview

If Cyd Charisse, Bob Fosse, and Gene Kelly don't mean anything to you, then A Woman Is a Woman probably won't either. But if they do, then the film will be a hell of a lot less meager, having some spice amidst all the pop art sugar. In 1961, Godard was a hot shot director, riding off the massive success of '60's Breathless, which remains to be his finest hour. Unavoidably, A Woman Is a Woman is minor, showing the director paying homage to the Hollywood musical with varied success.Godard's muse/wife Anna Karina portrays Angela, a young and overtly naïve stripper who longs to have a baby. Her boyfriend, Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy), refuses to commit to the decision. Desperate, Angela turns her attention towards Emile's best friend, Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo).A Woman Is a Woman pays one homage after the other, and in return, the film is more of a love letter than an actual film. Whenever Emile turns Angela's advances down, she responds with a babyish that's-not-fair! frown that mirrors the ingenue sensibilities of Debbie Reynolds or Sandra Dee. Angela works at a strip club that has all the exoticness of the one Barbara Stanwyck danced for in Ball of Fire (meaning there is zero exoticness to be found). Emile is the sensible Fred Astaire type and Alfred is his charming Van Johnson counterpart. But the characters never feel quite original; they're nearly echoes of the people Godard is trying to emulate.I find myself having the exact same problems in the majority of Godard's films. They bewitch you with their style, crowding the landscape with snappy American style advertisements, chic actors, and an eye for color that can range from the ice cold pizazz of a film noir to the gaudiness of a Technicolor musical. Yet it's as if Godard puts the story in his mouth and shreds it with his teeth; even if it's straightforward, it's detached, almost blasé. His films are so concentrated on flipping a genre movie onto its head that they seem to forget to be even somewhat compelling.But A Woman Is a Woman isn't without its charms. Godard's manipulation of sound swings the supposed score around and smashes it into a wall; the few musical sequences are inspired in their delivery. Karina, always a pleasure to watch, is simply lovely; Belmondo is lightly smug and ready to please as Brialy's foil.Nevertheless, A Woman Is a Woman is more self-serving than it is accessible. It is one of Godard's most elegantly shot films, but it lacks the heart of Breathless or Bande á part. Read more reviews at petersonreviews.com

Jean-Luc Godard's first two films (À bout de soufflé and Le petit soldat) were thrillers that drew inspiration from American noir, but UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME (A Woman is a Woman, 1961) shifts gears drastically to a riff on American musical comedies, with the characters occasionally singing and dancing, and the camera jumping between realistic depictions and these musical interludes. But as one of the seminal figures of the French New Wave with its desire to shake up conventions, Godard added some elements of his own. As the film opens, the soundtrack keeps cutting abruptly in and out, an aural equivalent of the unsettling jump cuts with which he started his career. There are allusions to his earlier films and to his New Wave peers, and just a touch of sarcastic allusions to French political tensions.The plot is fairly simple: cabaret dancer Angela (Anna Karina), who is clearly not looking to buck any traditional sex roles in an age of dawning feminism, wants a baby. Unable to get it from her partner Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy), she gradually welcomes the advances of Émile's best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo). The way in which this triangle ultimately works out is a little surprising considering that it was made in 1961. The most appropriate adjective overall for this film is "cute". The characters spend a lot of time bickering, but always with witty ripostes. Karina here is not yet the great actress of later roles, and Godard uses her instead as essentially a Barbie doll (nice to look at, not much there), but it works well enough for this particular story. The film was shot with no fixed script, and why it's not a free-for-all, there are clearly improvisational elements here that only add to the film's charm, such as the characters' encounters with everyday Parisians in street scenes.

"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