The camera is right there. In the record store, it pans back and forth with Nana and a customer, then turns and looks out a window. In a bar, the camera starts to pan to the left and then glances back again. On the street with the hookers, the camera looks first down one side and then the other, slowing at a woman it finds intriguing. She meets Raoul, a pimp. "Give me a smile," he says, as the camera holds them both in two-shot. She refuses, then smiles and exhales at the same time, and the camera turns away from Raoul and approaches her, suddenly interested, as she does. We are implicated. We are the camera, watching, wondering. The camera is not expressing a "style" but the way people look at other people.
Fmous shots. She smokes while a client embraces her, looking over his shoulder, eyes empty. Later Raoul inhales and kisses her, and she blows out his smoke. What is there to do in this Paris but hang out in bars, smoke, wish you had more money? Prostitution for her isn't much more interesting than pinball. In France, prostitution is called "the life," which gives another meaning to the title. There is a monotone Q&A conversation in which Raoul explains the rules of her new trade.