Le Cinema Francais by Anne Keenan Higgins

Author:Anne Keenan Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2018-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

Une femme mariée

(UNE FEMME MARIÉE)

Charlotte is a pretty and bored housewife married to Pierre, an airline pilot. She bounces back and forth between her husband and a lover, Robert. The film opens with beautifully composed close-ups of Charlotte and Robert caressing each other in a hotel room—Charlotte’s hand reaching out wearing a wedding ring, Robert’s hand without a wedding ring grasping Charlotte’s wrist, and Charlotte’s legs roaming across the bed. These movements continue without real emotion and begin to resemble the print advertisements Charlotte obsesses over in her fashion magazines.

As Charlotte carries on her carefree bourgeois life of shopping, attending fashion shows, fixating on the size of her breasts, and meeting her lover, she discovers she is pregnant. She keeps this information a secret from Robert—perhaps not knowing if it’s his. It’s hard to tell whether Charlotte even wants a baby, but flipping through the glossy pages of Paris Elle may just give her the answer she’s looking for.

The French censorship board stirred up controversy over the title of this film, forcing director Jean-Luc Godard to change it from “The Married Woman” to “A Married Woman” because the former seemed to imply that all married French women were like Charlotte. Though perhaps not intending to take aim squarely at French women, Godard did say he hoped to make a larger commentary on youth culture of the mid-1960s, a generation he observed as being more absorbed by TV and fashion than by important world events. The director addressed this indifference on the screen. For example, during a dinner party at Charlotte’s home, she gets into a debate about the past and the present and insists she prefers the present because “there’s no time to think.”

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1964

Starring Macha Méril, Bernard Noël, and Philippe Leroy

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