Chaplin once said that tragedy is life close-up; and that comedy is life shown as long shot. Here, Godard films a comedy in close-up, and so begins the tragi-comedy Une Femme est Une Femme.
Open on: colour, vibrant. Angela, a striptease artist slash antiheroine, tries to bargain with her boyfriend, Emile, "I will fry you an egg on one condition: we have a baby." The lovers perpetual banter with postmodern winks and bows to the camera takes a serious turn here and Angela threatens to have a baby with Emile's friend, Alfred (Belmondo as charming asshole).
Godard's homage/expression of nostalgia for the (American) musical, the film's score is ever noticeable as it abruptly cuts in and out, splashing the vitality and chaos that embodies Angela and her life -- but the film is not a musical -- it is "the idea of the musical". It emerges from the subject, Angela. Atonioni says in a preface to one of his books, paraphrased by Godard: "the subject will emerge which will be the person [herself], [her] idea of the world, and the world created by this idea of it, the overall idea which this conjures." Consequently the film conforms to Angela's vision. Godard, the painter, shows this through rich primary colours in cinemascope, enhancing the atmosphere of Angela's imagination of dancing in a Gene Kelly film. The same visual effect is seen in Amelie.
But, as the film is a neorealist musical, the constrains of society tug on Angela's dream and she is limited to singing while undressing to men in a cabaret. The contradiction of the neorealist musical is connected to the commonly used the Godardian theme of "how somebody extricates [herself] from a certain situation." Here, a womanly urge for a baby and:
Angela: Je veux etre dans une comedie musicale!
Eccentricities of Angela and Emilie as motif: the silent communication through book titles, the cleansing of bare feet before bed, the tap of the shower pipe with a hammer, oh! Their youthful spirits and Angela's adorable costume -- those red pantyhose! -- contrasted by the seriousness of infidelity. Paradoxes abound, Angela sleeping with Alfred is an childish solution to an adult problem that leads to a morally broken yet loving couple.
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