Five years after his debut with A Bout De Souffle, Jean-Luc Godard and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard made another jump-cutting pastiche of the American B-movie, with this enjoyably experimental crime comedy that freewheels across Paris.
Godard's actress wife Anna Karina plays the lonely Odile, who falls in with a pair of street toughs named Arthur (Brasseur) and Franz (Frey) at her English-language class. Infatuated with the stocky Arthur, she assists the duo in a hare-brained scheme to steal money from her aunt's lodger...
Dispensing with a traditional narrative, Godard tosses in pop and high-culture references and reveals the characters' thoughts through narration. Simultaneously realistic and dream-like, Bande A Part offers up some intoxicating set-pieces, notably the choreographed dance routine and the trio's chase around the Louvre.