'Have you ever been married?', 'Not very often.'

Une femme mariée
Jean-Luc Godard 1964 France

Jean-Luc Godard would be one of my picks for a list of the greatest directors of all time and, as such, he sort of has a pass with me. I think that as someone who has made several genuine classics and created several classic scenes in bad films he's allowed to miss sometimes, and he does; occasionally becoming too intellectual, too militant or just too difficult, often seemingly just for the sake of it. Une femme mariée, Godard's riff on marriage, parenthood, sex and pleasure, lays somewhere in the middle but still has a lot to like. The opening scene is startling in its simplicity (and paradoxically its creativity) and eroticism, the frame at times containing no more than a hand, a pair of legs and a bedsheet, the two bodies the only colour on the white background. And, of course, there's avid reference to literature and film, in this case Molière, Céline and Hitchcock among others. He even has his main character give a playful nod to Louis Feuillade's Fantomas, except she's mistaken and actually means another of Feuillade's serials Les Vampires. If it had been almost any other director I probably would have thought it was a genuine mistake but Godard being Godard it's a springboard to point out the pretentions of his bourgeois characters, an idea he returns to when he frames conversations as if the speakers are talking heads in a (quite dull) documentary; he even has the young son of the main characters weigh in on the subject of childhood. This also links into one of the most daring things about the script, that the characters are all so unlikeable. It's not even that they're anti-heroes, they're just horrible. Macha Méril's Charlotte (a repeated name in Godard's work) is self-obsessed, conducting an affair behind her husband's back (and it's implied that it's not the first time), has a child she doesn't particularly seem to care for and refers to as 'the boy', and thinks of little other than fashion, at one point not understanding the tragic punch-line of a political joke a friend of her husband makes. Her husband meanwhile is a boastful capitalist who it's revealed once 'raped and slapped' her, although paying a private detective to follow her is apparently the worst of his crimes ('so disrespectful'). It's the kind of skewed vision Godard does a lot but it has to be said that, as good as the film is, it's certainly not an accessible view and may be a little caustic and experimental for newcomers to Godard. Breathless and Une femme est une femme are both better and easier to get along with. Still, it's worth a watch somewhen down the line.