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Bande á Part Reviews

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One of pioneering director Jean-Luc Godard's most accessible films is this French spin on Dolores Hitchens' novel Fool's Gold. It tells the tale of three disaffected youths who plan a burglary, leading to deadly results. The alienated young trio is marvelous, particularly Anna Karina, and the early scenes of their clearly overdeveloped fantasy lives are splendidly handled. Something of a companion piece to Godard's classic À Bout de Souffle, its young characters have the same odd mixture of fatalism and starry-eyed naïveté that is, by turns, appealing and tragic. Trivia buffs should note that the film gave its name to Quentin Tarantino's production company (A Band Apart), and several of its scenes are echoed in his Pulp Fiction.

Reviewed By: Louis Schwartz

Bande à part is the story of three alienated French youths (Odile, Arthur, and Franz) who attempt an ill-fated burglary. Bande à Part is one of the easiest Godard films to follow because its story is presented linearly and without disruptive montage. Although the film does not generate much narrative tension, it does capture the atmosphere among Odile, Arthur, and Franz. Bande à part contains two of the most memorable and exciting scenes of the French New Wave: a scene in which Odile, Arthur, and Franz run through a museum, and a scene in which they dance to a jukebox in a cafe. The dance scene has been borrowed in many films, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Rio Das Mortes and Hal Hartley's Simple Men. Bande à part is driven by its actors and the chemistry among them. It uses their interactions to document the feeling of being young and French in the early 1960s.