Vivre sa vie

Vivre sa vie depicts Nana (Anna Karina), a naive shopgirl, at the brief, flickering moment when she takes responsibility for her life. Nana takes to the streets, becoming a prostitute and a student of human emotions. Brechtian in its use of twelve dispassionately announced tableaux, Vivre sa vie is also intensely personal. Nana’s crucible is Jean-Luc Godard’s existential epiphany: Nana struggles to see, and say, things as they are, bravely concluding, “All is good.” In the famous scene in a movie theater, Nana’s rapt attention to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is a tribute to another who sacrificed control to take control.