FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Jean-Luc Godard - Und Femme Mariee 

Here comes the story of an attractive, bored and unfaithful housewife. A Married Woman marks a turning point in Godard's work, because unlike his films from the early 60s, this one is coolly and precisely filmed. It is not the narrative that is in the foreground, but symbols and signifiers. It all almost seems like a documentary and you get a sense of where film was heading in the 60s. It works like this: We see a male arm gripping a female wrist. The arms form a right angle reminiscent of a hammer and sickle. Immediately we think of communist social forms. After her arms, we see her body, then her face. Her name is Charlotte (Macha Méril) and she is literally disassembled into her individual parts. In what follows, Charlotte is now allowed to realise herself - something that cannot exactly be said of her lover Robert (Bernard Noël). And even less so of her husband Pierre (Philippe Leroy). Charlotte poses as if she were enthroned on an advertising poster. And Robert could indeed be any man. Anyone who desires this kind of model. And this is what Godard likes to film most: two beautiful and privileged people making love in a stylishly furnished room (dozing over culture in the process). But A Married Woman is no longer pop & pulp, but sombre and austerely photographed. We still experience beautiful women and prosperity, but also already Marxist allusions, but the aesthetics fortunately outweigh the ideological messages. It is less the social criticism that is important, but rather how Godard puts himself in his Charlotte's place. At the end of the film, we suspect that we know Charlotte. And what is she like? Like all of us - the sum of our consumer habits. I guess that's what makes up our "brand".