Κarina's debut feature is a typically seventies, "liberated" love story, structured in a prologue and seven chapters which its "total" auteur called "tableaux": a term coined by Jean- Luc Godard for their 12-part masterpiece My Life to Live. A carefree, romantic comedy veering to existential drama, Vivre ensemble jumps back and forth from post -new wave Paris to New York in turmoil. It depicts the shattering of a couple's romantic illusion that their unconventional lifestyle could be transformed into "a work of art". Everyday reality catches up and the dynamics of the relationship of Alain- a professor- and Julie -an unemployed actress ?- changes drastically. In the last act Alain, who was immersed in their crazy love affair like a potential suicide, is lost. A little like the filmmaker who jumped into her small, personal, low-budget movie as an act of liberation from her godardian mythologies and ended up with a tribute to François Truffaut. It took her 35 years to make another film.

- Nikos Savvatis