How does My Life to Live use documentary-style techniques?

In his 1962 film My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie), director Jean-Luc Godard employs documentary-style techniques through the use of ironical solipsism, incorporating pastiches of documentary forms and clinical jargon to examine the life of a young Parisian prostitute.1

Rather than functioning as a traditional documentary, these elements are used to create a detached, analytical study of the protagonist. Further emphasizing this self-reflexive approach to the medium, Godard includes a scene in which the heroine watches an extract from a film by Carl Dreyer, a director Godard greatly admired. Through these methods, Godard transforms the narrative into an intellectual essay, compelling the audience to maintain a disrupting awareness of the film as a constructed medium.1