A day in the life of a Parisian housewife/prostitute, interspersed with musings on the Vietnam War and other contemporary issues.
In this film, 'Her' refers to both Paris, the character of Juliette Janson and the actress playing her, Marina Vlady. The film is a kind of dramatised documentary, illustrating and exaggerating the emotionless lives of characters in the new Paris of the 60s, where commercialism mocks families getting by on small incomes, where prostitution is a moneyspinning option, and where people are coldly resigned and immune to the human nightmares of Vietnam, and impending Atomic war.—D.Giddings <[email protected]>
One day in the life of Parisienne Juliette Jeanson is presented. Married to garage employee Robert Jeanson, they with two adolescent children, Juliette generally lives a carefree life, which she is able to do on Robert's salary, but which is supplemented by her occasional daytime work, sometimes with her friend Marianne, as a prostitute, she treating that work without emotion. Her day is set within commentary by her, Robert, their children, others in their lives, random Parisians, and/or a whispering off-screen narrator (Jean-Luc Godard himself), often breaking the fourth wall, about anything and everything from the Vietnam War to the infrastructure boom in Paris making the city more of a modern urban concrete jungle. Human existence within this global environment, both in a practical sense and an existential sense, is often at the core of that commentary.—Huggo