Two or Three Things I Know About Her is a 1967 film by Jean-Luc Godard.
It does not have a conventional story, but rather is a series of ruminations about life in 1966 France. Marina Vlady stars as Juliette Jeanson, a wife and mother, who earns pocket money during the day by working as a prostitute. The film shows a day in Juliette's life, in which she runs routine errands like getting her car serviced at the garage where her husband works, and getting her hair done. She takes time out from her errands to turn a trick, meeting up with another prostitute friend of hers to do a threesome. Other characters include a friend of Juliette's, who meets a Russian journalist for lunch.
The above is really just a vehicle for a series of speeches about life, the way people communicate, and how humans perceive reality. Juliette and other characters address the camera directly, sharing their inner thoughts. Godard is heard throughout the film in voiceover, on a couple of occasions addressing characters but more often simply philosophizing. A major theme is how the United States is an evil imperialist country inflicting pain and misery on the people of Vietnam.
The title is sometimes rendered with numbers as 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, but original French advertising spelled the title out, "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle."
Tropes:
- Author Tract: The film is filled with long segments where Jean-Luc Godard shares his thoughts about all sorts of things."Since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since—since—since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me nor the subjectivity expelling me, since I cannot rise to a state of being nor collapse into nothingness—I have to listen, more than ever I have to look around me at the world, my fellow creature, my brother."
- Bathtub Scene: Used for both fanservice and surrealism. An attractive woman is shown taking a bath. She stands up, and, naked, starts drying herself off, when a man from the electric company barges in to read the meter. He bills her fifty thousand francs.
- Chummy Commies: Godard the leftist includes a scene where a character named Ivanov, a Russian journalist and a communist, chats with a lady fan. When the woman asks what communist ethics will be, Ivanov says "Look out for one another, work for one's country, love it, love the arts and science."
- Day in the Life: The film follows Jeanette around for one day of her life, with activities both mundane (getting her car washed, getting her hair done, shopping for a coat), and less mundane (being a hooker and having a threesome).
- Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Ivanov, the erudite journalist and Russian communist, ostentatiously puffs on a pipe as he smokes with a fan.
- Eagleland: A very, very Flavor 2 use of this trope, portraying America both as crassly materialistic, and murderously imperialistic. The war in Vietnam is mentioned many times. Even Juliette's grade-schooler son Christophe has a dream where a pair of twins fuse in to one, a dream the little boy interprets as being about North and South Vietnam. The creepy photographer who hires Juliette and her friend for a threesome wears an American flag T-shirt. A sign says "Pax Americana, the economy-size brainwasher." A character observes a pair of shoes and says "Yes, American shoes. They trample Vietnamese toes in them."
- ISO-Standard Urban Groceries: If there's one place where one should have a French baguette sticking up out of a grocery bag as one comes home, Paris is that place. Sure enough, Jeanette has a baguette sticking up out of her grocery bag.
- Leave the Camera Running: In the scene where Marianne's would-be pimp grills her with a series of questions about her outlook on life, the camera is trained on Marianne for five full minutes, without moving and without a cut.
- Medium Awareness: The film opens with Marina Vlady looking at the camera as Godard, in narration, says "She is Marina Vlady. She is an actress." After Godard mentions that Vlady is of Russian ancestry, the same shot is shown with slightly different lighting as Godard says "She is Juliette Jeanson," and the character of Juliette is introduced.
- No Fourth Wall: Throughout the film characters address the camera directly and say whatever is on their mind. Many times it's Juliette sharing her thoughts, but minor character do this too. In one scene a shopgirl in a clothing store looks at the camera and says she's going to meet her boyfriend after work.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Nothing happens, really. Jeanette wakes up, goes about her day, comes home, and goes to bed.
- "Number of Objects" Title: Two or Three Things I Know About Her
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: For starters there are Godard's long philosophical musings (see Author Tract above). But the characters within the film, especially Jeanette, also give long, formal speeches filled with complex dialogue. Jeanette's little son asks her "Mommy, what's language", and she answers "Language is the house man lives in."Juliette: I had a funny feeling. I thought about it all day. The feeling of my ties to the world. Suddenly I felt I was the world and the world was me. It would take pages and pages to describe it. Volumes and volumes. A landscape is like a face.
- Slice of Life: The film follows Juliette as she goes about her day. There is no story, but more of a portrait of life in contemporary Paris, with a lot of philosophizing going on.
- A Threesome Is Hot: Averted. Juliette is hired for a threesome along with her fellow hooker, Marianne. They're both attractive, but for starters their client is a creep who insists they wear bags over their heads, and beyond that, everyone seems very bored.
- Unproblematic Prostitution: Juliette seems to be perfectly OK with spending her afternoons hooking. The narration says that her husband asked her to work as a prostitute so they'd have enough money to afford their nice apartment.
