A part of me is tempted to read Godard’s wonderful Vivre Sa
Vie solely in Marxist terms. A young Parisian woman, Nana (Anna
Karina), leaves a stable working-class relationship to pursue her
dreams (she wants to become a film actor). But instead of rising to
fame, she slides down into prostitution.
She needs money, she can’t go back to her old, predictable ways, she
wants more from life, and all she owns is her body and her youth. She
is not a slave; no one is forcing her to sell her sex. The shameful
situation has resulted from a choice she made. Society is not to blame.
Capitalism is not to blame. Her family is not to blame. Instead of
legitimately trading her labor power on the job market, she—as a
thinking individual, as a citizen in a democratic society—met a
stranger on the street, led him to a dingy room in a hotel, determined
a price, and let him have his way with her. And after this initial
encounter, she did not stop, turn, and run back to the safety of her
family, the job market, the apparatuses of the state (church, school,
the law), but knowingly continued to meet other men in dingier and
dingier hotel rooms, to befriend other prostitutes in bars patronized
by Parisian criminals, and to surrender her freedom to an obviously
ruthless pimp.
Her tragic end has its source nowhere else but in herself, her
freedom. Indeed, the more I think about this movie, the more I’m
convinced that the part of me that wants to read it in Marxist terms is
absolutely right.
