A Woman Is a Woman

Three people stand in a hallway with white walls and a green door, engaged in a tense conversation. The central figure in red gestures while the others listen.

Angela (Anna Karina) wants to have a baby, but finds her boyfriend Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) an unwilling participant. Instead, she goes to his friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) for assistance, proving the lengths to which she'll go to realize her dream of motherhood.

A Woman is a Woman is a cinephile's dream film, festooned with enough eccentric musical moments to satisfy the most avant of gardists, including a Charles Aznavour song almost arbitrarily rocketing on and off the soundtrack and Michel Legrand's pre-Umbrellas of Cherbourg score thundering into split-second breaks in dialogue, cinematic in-jokes galore, and plenty of anarchic humor. This clever and lighthearted French New Wave film won a jury prize from the Berlin Film Festival for its "originality, youth, audacity and impertinence," while the enchanting Karina (in her first major role) was named Best Actress.

The film screens in a 4K digital restoration produced from the original 35mm negative and sound negative. It was scanned in 4K by Hiventy, then color-graded and digitally cleaned to remove imperfections in the original elements. The restoration was completed thanks to the support of the CNC and supervised by Studiocanal’s Sophie Boyer and Jean-Pierre Boiget.

Our annual French Film Festival is supported by Albertine Cinémathèque and presented in collaboration with the Department of Romance Studies.

Albertine Cinémathèque is part of the French For All initiative by Villa Albertine – The French Institute for Culture and Education, and Albertine Foundation, and is made possible with the support from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC).

Part of our "French Film Festival." In French with English subtitles. Courtesy of Rialto Pictures.