A revival of Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman Is a Woman from 1961 provides a hint of the heady flavor that marked the French New Wave. The movie shows Godard reevaluating the musical genre and almost at a crossroads in his development into either a sourpuss or a buoyant optimist. Model-turned-starlet-turned-Godardian spouse Anna Ka ri na seizes the screen as a contemporary woman who works as a topless performer and decides that she wants to have a baby. But neither of the two men in her life shares her desires.
At the time of its release, Godard's portrait of a woman's dilemma seemed rather anachronistic, but now it makes me wonder if he was one of the first to document the ticking of a woman's biological clock. Full of Godardian film play, A Woman Is a Woman also reflects the joy of a filmmaker un leashed.
