My Life to Live is a highly stylized and unconventional rendering of a simple story: a young woman seeks freedom and dreams of stardom, only to fall into a life of prostitution. The narrative emerges from the film's structure--twelve loosely connected tableaux, or "chapters," which complement the literary allusions that run throughout and amount to a series of cinematic portraits. Godard and cameraman Raoul Coutard use these visual occasions to create unmistakable filmic allusions as well: Nana (the director's then-wife Anna Karina) is at times the Louise Brooks of Pandora's Box and the Falconetti of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. A paean to the eternal feminine of cinema, the film is nevertheless-in consummate Godardian style-never too far from a critique of the politics of consumption and the society of the spectacle.