“Each of my films constitutes a report on the state of the nation: they are new reportages, treated in a quirkish way perhaps, but rooted in actuality.” --Jean-Luc Godard.
The source of inspiration for Godard's incisive Two or Three Things I Know About Her was a news article describing the phenomenon of “shooting stars” - housewives living in the suburbs of Paris who casually prostitute themselves out of financial necessity. The film covers twenty-four hours in the life of such a woman living with her garage mechanic husband and two children in a housing project; she commutes to Paris to turn the tricks which enable her to “cleverly” manage an inadequate household budget.
According to Godard, the “her” in the title, although an ostensible reference to the protagonist, also encompasses Paris, the personification of contemporary malaise and the disintegration of communication. “...My real aim (in this film) is to observe the vast mutation which our civilization is undergoing at present and to ask myself how one can best come to grips with this mutation..... In order to live in society in Paris today, on no matter what social level, one is forced to prostitute oneself in one way or another - or to put it another way, to live under conditions resembling those of prostitution.... In modern society prostitution is the norm: and my film endeavors to present one or two lessons on industrial society.” --Godard, in Sight and Sound