Friday Flicks 37274

Ever heard people throw around famous directors??? names and think ???What if there was a way to make short, pithy references to their cinematic masterpieces without actually having to sit through ???Battleship Potemkin???? Fortunately, now there is! We???ve dispatched Intern Anastasia to brave the subtitles???and the pretentious clerks at Kim???s Video???so you can sound cultured at dinner parties.

A Woman Is A Woman is part of the ???60s French New Wave, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It???s like a fractured, cartoonish version of an American musical. Godard preferred to call it a ???neo-realist musical.??? (How pretentieuse!)

It???s ???neo-realist??? because Godard does things like start a song in the background and abruptly stop it, or have the lighting rigs visible in some shots—supposedly to show how fake film is by breaking its conventions. Either that, or he got lazy and then decided to tell everyone, ???That microphone hanging down? Yeah, that???s totally neo-realist.???

Anyway, it stars Godard???s then-girlfriend Anna Karina as Angela, a striptease artist. Angela dances around in a sailor outfit for a living, and is prone to saying things like, ???I???d like to be in a musical comedy starring Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly! Choreography by Bob Fosse!???

She wants a baby, and she announces this to her boyfriend, Emile, over dinner. Basically, she asks if he wants soft-boiled eggs, he says yes, and she says, ???Okay, but on one condition: I want a baby!??? Emile isn???t that crazy about soft-boiled eggs, so he says no, and they fight. Eventually, Angela says she???ll have a baby with anyone. Emile offers to call his friend Alfred to do the job. Alfred comes by, but Angela chickens out.

Alfred and Emile leave and go to a strip club. Then we see Emile and Angela in their apartment, in pajamas. They decide they???re not speaking, so they communicate by grabbing books from the shelf and showing each other the titles. ???Monster.??? ???Executioner.??? ???Peruvian Mummy.??? ???Sardine.???

The next day, Angela???s in the apartment alone, and her neighbor tells her she has a phone call. It???s Emile and he wants to apologize, but she says she can???t forgive him. We see Emile talking to a co-worker, saying ???She can go fry an egg!??? And then, of course, we see Angela frying an egg. Wait! She has another phone call! Like any reasonable person, she flips the egg onto the ceiling, answers the phone and says ???hold on,??? goes back to catch the egg, and sits down with the phone. It turns out it???s Alfred, and she agrees to meet him at a café.

Once they???re there, Alfred shows Angela a picture of Emile with another woman. She stares at the picture, smoking and crying, while a song plays on the jukebox. There???s a good three minutes where we???re just listening to this song, looking at the record turning on the jukebox, and looking at Angela. It???s kind of like in Family Guy when Peter???s fighting that chicken: At first it seems clever but then it gets really annoying and goes on for way too long.

Anyhow, Angela isn???t sleeping with Alfred just yet. First she has another fight with Emile, then they make up, then they fight. Emile goes onto the streets of Paris, showing men Angela???s picture and asking if they???d sleep with her to get her pregnant. He gives up on that and looks for her in the strip club, but she???s not there. He gets fed up and (naturally!) sleeps with a prostitute.

Emile goes back to the apartment, and Angela walks in. She says she just slept with Alfred, because Emile didn???t want a baby. She???s all, ???He played that song I liked, it goes doot doo doo?????? And then they argue over whether the song goes ???doot doo doo??? or ???doot doo doot.??? Once they???ve settled that important matter, they wonder what to do if she???s pregnant.

Then they both have the same brilliant idea! They won???t know for a few days if she???s pregnant, so she???ll sleep with Emile now, and they???ll be sure he???s the father. A happy ending for all!