Une Femme Mariée

Jean-Luc Godard referred to his 1964 feature Une Femme Mariée (A Married Woman) as “fragments of a film,” a description that should warn viewers not to expect an ordinary narrative (as if this director were ever capable of being conventional). The film's loose plot revolves around a young wife named Charlotte (Macha Méril) who's cheating on her brusque airplane pilot husband (Philippe Leroy) with a handsome actor (Bernard Noël). When Charlotte learns she's pregnant, she must make a decision between the two men. Godard's take on this soap-operatic story is characteristically flip (far more concerned with ideas than emotions), offering a satirical critique of obsession with consumer culture (Charlotte spends much of her time searching through advertisements for the perfect bra). Une Femme Mariée's unusual cinematic mix incorporates fast-paced scenes reminiscent of Godard's own Breathless together with montages of lovemaking made up of discreet posed images, punctuated by interior non sequiturs spoken in hushed tones by the heroine, as well as monologues with titles like “Memory” and “Childhood.” Visually it's joyfully free-associating, using magazine headlines and street signs to comment slyly on the action, and even shifting from positive to negative film stock and back again at one point simply for eye-catching effect. Like most of Godard's films, Une Femme Mariée is a cerebral work that comes across as cool and detached, but avoids the political heavy-handedness of his later movies. An intriguing earlier film from one of the founders of the nouvelle vague, this is recommended. (F. Swietek)