Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

A Married Woman Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 24, 2016

Alain Resnais famously intercut scenes of a couple in an at least sometimes sensuous series of interchanges with horrifying archival footage of the aftereffects of the dropping of the atom bomb in his epochal Hiroshima mon amour. It’s a cinematic disconnect which is still hotly debated today. What, exactly, was Resnais’ motive? This hyperintellectual French director plays on tropes of memory and history within the confines of the relationship between one man and one woman in ways that seem to intentionally subvert both the traditional definitions of narrative and the vagaries of the so-called “romantic” film. Those who have grown tired of pondering Resnais’ formulations may find a new challenge in an outing by another hyperintellectual French director, Jean-Luc Godard, in one of his lesser known vehicles, the mesmerizing if perhaps just slightly frustratingly minimalist A Married Woman. The film’s original title Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964, or more particularly the sobriquet contained within the French version, offer some clues to the structural artifice Godard employs in the film, one built largely out of short (or shortish) vignettes that may or may not interlock comfortably with their “neighbors”. But anyone acquainted with this era of Godard’s work will certainly be expecting a nontraditional narrative flow, so that may not be what immediately strikes some viewers as so fascinating about this film. Instead, it’s some patently odd subtext involving the Holocaust which may tend to raise a figurative eyebrow or two, an element Godard never exploits as overtly as Resnais does the atom bomb angle in his film, but which resides in the film as an unsettling if perhaps also inexplicable sidebar.

The Hebrew word shoah (appropriated, of course, by Claude Lanzmann for Shoah) refers to destruction, and ironically one of the things being destroyed by the passage of time since the Holocaust is the very memories of those who survived the carnage. That’s why such phenomena as The Shoah Project have become so valuable in documenting the horrors that untold millions experienced in the 1930s and 1940s. This “forgetfulness” is perhaps (perhaps) slightly more understandable now that we’re approaching the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, but the fact that Charlotte (Macha Méril), the young woman at the core of A Married Woman’s tale of marital infidelity (and/or fidelity), doesn’t seem to know what Auschwitz is or was in 1964 (the self announced timeframe of the film) may strike some as patently odd. What, exactly, is Godard trying to tell us about this appealing if perhaps intellectually uncurious young woman?

Charlotte’s apparent brainlessness about Auschwitz (“Oh, right! Hitler!” she exclaims after misidentifying the “situation”) is revealed only after a really interesting opening montage in A Married Woman which may in fact remind some viewers of a similar opening gambit in Hiroshima, mon amour. Godard shows us a series of almost abstract views of a couple—limbs isolated from bodies, hands seemingly floating in the white space of an unmade bed—which suggest an almost timeless intimacy. And, yet—this couple is rather strangely intimate. A brief interchange which seems to suggest Charlotte can’t tell the as yet unseen male she loves him is followed almost immediately by her indeed professing her love for him. Again, the fact that Godard delays showing the man while almost simultaneously letting it spill that whoever he is, he’s not Charlotte’s husband, is another intriguing building block that Godard utilizes to slightly undermine the audience’s immediate apprehension of what exactly is going on.

Charlotte’s lover is a relatively un-self-absorbed actor named Robert (Bernard Noël), a guy who is less concerned with his own performance abilities (so to speak) than those of Charlotte, whom he suspects of “acting” when she’s around him. Unfortunately for Charlotte, that suspicion also extends to her husband Pierre (Philippe Leroy), a devoted husband who suspects his wife may be playing around but who doesn’t quite know how to deal with that fact. Complicating matters is the fact that Pierre has been married previously and has a darling little boy whom Charlotte cares for when Pierre is away. It’s Pierre’s latest return in fact (with real life filmmaker Roger Leenhardt) that sparks the whole patently odd Holocaust element.

As is hinted at in the film’s French title, A Married Woman is deliberately episodic (replete with some “chapter headings”), offering relatively brief but incisive looks at Charlotte’s indecision as she attempts to ferret out whether to stay with Pierre or move on to Robert. There’s a distinctly French if perhaps nonetheless just slightly troubling nonchalance about Charlotte’s dalliance, as if it’s the norm in relationships and nothing that in and of itself should be disquieting. In other words, the angst in the film is derived less from the fact that Charlotte is philandering than from the fact she can’t make up her mind which guy to “settle down” with.

Hiroshima, mon amour stunningly interwove then recent history with its tale of two (mismatched?) lovers, but A Married Woman struggles at times to make its threesome part of something larger. What probaby works better than the fleeting references to the horrors of World War II is some piquant commentary on consumer culture. Charlotte loves to peruse fashion magazines and the like, as if staying au courant on contemporary trends will help her navigate the vicissitudes of her life. It’s easier to be under informed about genocide when there’s a flashy ad for a new brassiere crying out for attention.

A Married Woman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Married Woman is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Cohen's press materials tout a new 2K restoration done from the original negative, though it's unclear whether this is "newer" than whatever was used for the British Blu-ray from a few years ago. One way or the other, the results look fantastic virtually all of the time, with nicely modulated gray scale and some convincing blacks, along with consistently strong contrast. Even subtle gradations of whites (when, for example, bodies are in front of bedclothes) are easily distinguishable. There are minor variances in sharpness throughout the presentation, some of which can probably be traced to filming environments. A couple of shots have some kind of odd softness and almost a quasi-fisheye lens look (see screenshot 7) and on just a couple of occasions there are some minor anomalies that creep in (see the lower left corner of screenshot 4), but generally speaking sharpness and clarity are first rate and an organic looking grainfield resolves naturally.

A Married Woman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Married Woman features an LPCM 2.0 mono track which more than capably handles the film's dialogue and (relatively few) musical moments. There's nothing very demanding about the sound design of the film, despite occasional spikes in dynamic range when, for example, Pierre's plane comes in for a landing. Otherwise, though, the film plays out in a series of mostly one on one interchanges, and as such this track delivers all sonic information effortlessly, without any signs of damage.

A Married Woman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Agnes B (1080p; 21:29)


• Interview with Antoine de Baecque (1080p; 19:20)


• Interview with Macha Meril (1080p; 31:55)


• Original Trailer (1080p; 3:58)


• 2015 Re-release Trailer (1080p; 1:35)

A Married Woman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Godard tends to "work" on me almost subliminally at times, and I may simply not have completely absorbed everything A Married Woman has to offer, but I have to wonder whether Godard's reach at least slightly exceeded his grasp with this film. It's often a riveting experience, but it's weirdly dissociative from an emotional standpoint, and some of its intellectual pretensions seem, well, pretentious. Cohen has delivered a beautiful looking transfer and also provided some appealing supplements. Recommended.