Towards a philosophy of language in the boudoir Vivre sa vie (1962) di Jean-Luc Godard

Abstract

This essay examines the linguistic and philosophical foundations of Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962) by situating it within the intellectual legacy of Brice Parain, who appears in the film. The study first reconstructs Godard’s linguistic formation, emphasizing his passage from film criticism to filmmaking as a movement driven by the desire to emancipate cinematic writing from the constraints of French literary culture. The essay then analyses Vivre sa vie as a film that deliberately fractures classical narrative continuity through its tableau structure, its refusal of conventional shot/reverse-shot, and its insistence on the opacity of verbal exchange. The encounter between Nana and Parain emerges as the conceptual core of the film: their dialogue articulates the tension between speech, silence, thought, and the social economy of language, highlighting the ways in which words risk becoming instruments of exchange, alienation, and prostitution. The essay argues that Godard mobilizes Parain’s metaphysics of language to stage a critique of linguistic commodification and to gesture toward a renewed, ascetic relation between thought and speech, wherein silence becomes the condition for the resurrection of a different, non-prostituted form of life.