It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

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

VIVRE SA VIE is a film by French auteur Jean-Luc Godard, one of those art-house directors that people always bang on about. I'm afraid that I don't share the same sensibilities, although I try to see the films if they're showing on TV just so I know what's being talked about. VIVRE SA VIE is a low budget black and white production about a woman whose promiscuity sees her descend into prostitution, and I'm afraid it's a film which left me cold.This kind of story was previously done in Emile Zola's famous novel NANA, which brought to life the seediness of 19th century Paris, and by comparison VIVRE SA VIE simply isn't up to scratch. The characters are subdued and bored and thus come across as dull in themselves. I didn't care or feel sympathy for any of them. The film is presented in twelve vignettes but they're all very similar and the viewer doesn't really learn or understand much from watching. It all seems so trivial, a shame when important subject matters are crying out for treatment.

I remember being stunned when i saw this in the cinema in the 60s and i am delighted to find that it holds up so well. The chapter heads look a little forced now but that hasn't stopped others copying it and it does avoid the compulsion to adhere to a strict narrative flow. Wonderful performance from Anna Karina and such good cinematography from the masterful, Raoul Coutard. We see nothing in the round, nothing in the whole. A corner of a wall, part of a poster or street sign and only bits and pieces of the performers most of the time. A marvellous sequence in a record shop begins fairly ordinarily then runs along the record racks before slipping sideways and giving us a view out of the window. It is not forced or theatrical but just how things really are. The opening section is set with the boy and girl sat at a mirrored bar. We see only the backs of their heads but for the occasional reflection, yet it seems so real, a truth touched upon in all its fragility. The dialogue throughout most of the film is stark and spare but more poetic and rounded towards the end, culminating in the inspired 'chat' between Karina and 'the philosopher' when all is made clear. The denouement is a farcical but dreadful surprise and the direction throughout, assured and audacious. This may or may not be truth 24 frames a second but certainly it is true cinema!

"Vivre Sa Vie," translated roughly as "My Life to Live" follows a woman who slowly descends from being in a relationship to becoming a prostitute in order to get by. Such subject matter was, for the most part, not touched by Hollywood at the time of its release since it was very edgy and uncomfortable, and God forbid that Hollywood's audiences get uncomfortable when watching a film. But this wasn't Hollywood; this is part of the French New Wave.The film is told in 12 episodic tales which have titles and their own sections of the tale, such as certain Tarantino films including Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds. For me, 12 seemed a little much, and it felt like it could have been done with a few of the episodes left out. I am not complaining about the length, it is still relatively a short movie, but I think I remember one or two episodes that were too short to be considered their own episodes in my opinion.I think it is great for Godard to work with such subject matter; the only "explicit" film I remember seeing from around this era was "Persona" by Bergman, and I was shocked at the language they used - I thought people were only that vulgar in movies towards the end of the 60s and onwards. However, there are shots that seem uninteresting, including the final shot of the film, and the final scene in general makes the film end on a very abrupt note.This is a good character study which has darker material than the mise-en-scene/lighting/tone of the film. I would have liked to see this darkness portrayed in the visuals, but this is still a good film.

VIVRE SA VIE was Jean-Luc Godard's fourth feature film. The protagonist Nana (Anna Karina) is a young Parisian woman who is not especially bright, but full of life and endowed with great beauty. Unable to make ends meet by working at a record shop, and unable to break into films as she dreams, she starts to work as a prostitute. Postwar French law permitted prostitution, with certain rules and regulations that the film explains in a documentary-like segment. Nana, who yearns to live her life according to her own desires, initially thinks that this new profession has set her free from cares. In fact, Nana's liberation from penury through prostitution only subjects her to new constraints imposed by her pimp and clientèle. The film, divided into twelve tableaux with fade-to-black transitions that quicken as it goes on (which one commentator compares to breathing faster and faster) brings us to one of the most shocking endings I have ever seen.This is a superlative film. Clocking in at 85 minutes, it lasts exactly as long as its story demands, with not a single moment that feels superfluous. Everything fits together, perfectly even things that ought to seem extraneous, the overindulgence of the auteur. Early in the film Nana goes to see Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent film "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc", and this is not a mere gratuitous tribute to earlier cinema as is common in French New Wave films. Nana speaks with an elderly philosopher in a café, who is in fact the real-life philosopher Brice Parain whose dialogue here consists of his own writings, and yet this is not shallow intellectualism. Rather, these scenes increase the three-dimensionality of Nana as a character: not very intelligent and with negligible education, an easy woman since long before the film begins, but feeling strongly that there must be more out there.The believability of Nana as a character is increased all the more by Anna Karina's masterful performance. When coming to Godard's films, after the filmmaker has taken a beating from some circles, one might think that Karina was simply a beauty with no especial talent that enchanted the director due to her looks and foreign origin. Nope, the Danish actress here presents a completely believable Parisian airhead who is so easily moved by sentimental art.