A Married Woman
A Married Woman | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jean-Luc Godard |
Written by | Jean-Luc Godard |
Starring | Macha Méril |
Cinematography | Raoul Coutard |
Edited by | Andrée Choty Françoise Collin Agnès Guillemot Gérard Pollicand |
Distributed by | Columbia Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 94 minutes |
Country | France |
Language | French |
A Married Woman (French: Une femme mariée) is a 1964 French drama film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, his eighth feature film.
Plot
Charlotte is a woman in her twenties, married to Pierre, an affluent man in his later thirties or forties. Pierre's passion is flying, and he flies his own private plane, after previously having been an air force pilot. Pierre has a young son, Nicolas, from his first marriage, which dissolved when his wife left him for another man. Pierre, Charlotte, and Nicolas live together in a modern apartment outside Paris. Charlotte spends her days going to cafes, shopping, swimming, at the cinema, reading women's fashion magazines, or with her lover, Robert, an actor. Pierre believes that Charlotte's affair is over, having previously confronted her with evidence from a private investigator.
As the film opens, Charlotte and Robert are in a Paris love nest that Robert has rented. They make love, and he repeats an earlier request that Charlotte divorce Pierre to marry him. Leaving the apartment, Robert drives Charlotte to the department store
The next morning, the maid tells Charlotte a story of a ribald love-making session with her own husband. For this narrative, Godard borrowed from Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Death on Credit, which he acknowledges indirectly in the film. Charlotte then attends a fashion photo-shoot at a swimming pool and eavesdrops at a nearby café as two teenage girls discuss their love lives and first sexual encounters.
Charlotte goes to the doctor and learns that she is pregnant. She does not know which man is the father and asks the doctor about contraception, leading to a discussion of the relationship between love, sexual pleasure, and conception.
Charlotte then goes to Orly Airport for an assignation with Robert, as previously arranged, before he has to fly to Marseille to act in a production of Racine's Bérénice. They meet in the back of the airport's cinema, during a screening of Night and Fog, Alain Resnais's documentary about the Holocaust. Partway through the film, they leave the theater separately and rendezvous at the airport hotel to make love. During their time together, Charlotte questions Robert about love. They hold hands on the mattress of the bed, echoing the opening shots of the movie. As Robert prepares to leave, they both say – one after the other – C'est fini ("It's over."). Fin ('End') appears on screen.
Cast
- Macha Méril : Charlotte
- Bernard Noël : Robert, the lover
- Philippe Leroy : Pierre, the husband
- Roger Leenhardt : Pierre's friend, the filmmaker
- Rita Maiden : The maid
- Margaret Le-Van : a woman at the swimming pool
- Véronique Duval : another woman at the pool
- Christophe Bourseiller : Nicolas
- André Lesourd : "Dédé" the mechanic at the airport
Background
Whilst in
Censorship
The Married Woman – Godard's original title for his film – was shown at the
Music
The credits are accompanied by a Beethoven string quartet – one of five that are heard in the course of the film. "Quand le film est triste", sung by Sylvie Vartan, accompanies a montage of magazine advertising images.[4]
The Ludwig van Beethoven excerpt heard over the credits and elsewhere in the film is the opening of the second movement of the String Quartet no 9 Op 59/3. An instrumental version of Claude Nougaro's song 'Le Jazz et la Java', its melody partly adapted from Joseph Haydn. underscores the maid's monologue.
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 85% based on 20 critics, with an average rating of 7.9/10.[5]
References
- ^ Brody, p.189-190.
- ISBN 0970703953
- ^ Richard Brody, Everything is Cinema, pp. 200-203.
- ^ Richard Brody, p. 193, 195.
- ^ "A Married Woman (1985)". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
External links
- A Married Woman at IMDb