Before watching any movie, I find out about it first. On IMDb, Godard’s ‘A Married Woman’ is described as:
A shallow-minded woman torn between her disliked husband and her meaningless lover.
Such a plot that is my cup of tea! I liked it immediately. Thought I’d watch it. And I did.
For those thinking, “Of course you’d watch such movies! You’re such a troublemaker!”… I humbly say to them: if everyone were as good as you, the world could have been so much more beautiful. Alas, it didn’t happen! I’m not good, so you stay good. Don’t read this review anymore. Thank you, come again.
What does it take to win the love of an absolutely ordinary girl? The movie has the answer: You must know what my eyes are saying.
Men who understand what women’s lips don’t say—those are the men women prefer.
A woman—she has a husband, she has a son. Her husband doesn’t understand her emotional needs, but as a gentleman’s wife, she doesn’t have to worry about social security or comfort. The husband wants to possess her in his own way, not as she is. What she likes, the husband dislikes. For the husband, living with memories is essential, even if those memories are painful. For her, nostalgia holds no value—present joy is everything. The husband worries about what will happen later. She’s busy with what’s happening now. She’s somewhat childish, restless, loves to play pranks in various ways; to her husband, all this seems like showing off. As much as the husband pushes her away outside the bedroom, he wants to pull her close inside it. He always looks at her with suspicion. Keeps her under surveillance, tries to maintain a kind of authority, attempts to bind her mind. He’s more of a husband than a friend. He doesn’t give her proper time, stays busy with his own work. This really doesn’t work. She’s human, not a robot!
On the other hand, her lover is exactly to her liking. He values her childishness, gives her time the way she wants. Whatever she says, whatever she does, everything seems right to her lover. The fantasies she drowns in—when she’s with her lover, she seems to experience them in reality. She buries herself in fashion magazines, obsesses over her figure measurements, loves to wander alone. Goes to movies, shops. Life appears colorful and enjoyable to her. She doesn’t think about past or future, just stays absorbed in the present. She loves to think and hear about dreams. Her lover is an actor by profession. It occurs to her too: this man who always presents himself before me exactly as I want him to—isn’t this part of his acting? She even asks this question. Naturally, she gets an answer that’s also to her liking. Women love to remain uncomprehending even after understanding, when made to understand the way they want to understand. The woman in the movie also knows her lover won’t marry her, yet she repeatedly wants to hear false promises. To get that satisfaction and happiness of celebrating the moment, she makes her heart hold love according to her own rules.
This film speaks of modern humanity’s relationship crisis and the taste of apparent escape from it. Godard has moved forward with the theme that life’s demands are greater than social morality. The practice of escaping from marital fatigue and discomfort to distance oneself, even momentarily, from all mental exhaustion—whether we stand for or against such practice, it has been happening, is happening, and will continue. If we try to obstruct it, family and social structures will collapse one by one. This aspect of individualism creates itself spontaneously and destroys itself spontaneously too. Out of life’s necessity, every modern person creates such purposeless, ignoble, immoral, fantasy-dependent utopias, and in the duty of survival, enjoys the bliss of blindness in the alleys of these ‘wrong cities.’