Also known as Bande à part (inspiring Quentin Tarantino's A Band Apart production company), this was Jean-Luc Godard's next film after Contempt. I had said in that review that I wouldn't bother with this film, but that was before a Meetup group invited me. If I didn't like it, I could still appreciate the talk before and after.
The titular band is not as big as I'd thought: just three young adults who meet via an ESL class. Arthur and Franz like to imagine themselves in a crime flick (unaware that they are) and have something of a love triangle with Odile (Godard staple Anna Karina), albeit not strongly enough to be genteel toward her. For the first hour or so, they mainly just goof around. Then they commit a crime for real: burglarizing a house that Odile shares with a non-relative who keeps a suspicious amount of cash in a stash. But someone besides Odile is home....
IMDb aptly counts comedy among the genres. Some of the humor comes from the guys deliberately, like when Arthur hammily feigns getting shot. Other times, Godard -- serving as both director and purple-prose narrator -- somewhat subtly makes fun of them and/or the movies they dig. He even says to stay tuned for a hackneyed adventure sequel that I'm sure he never planned to make. (He is still directing at 85, so in theory, it's not too late.)
One unusual thing that happens a lot herein is abrupt silence, or at least an abrupt pause in the contemporary music. I guess the usual point is a mood shift. Sometimes it's apparently to make room for the narration, even if that means that the trio audibly dances to nothing and keeps the rhythm while no one on screen notices. There's even a famous silly scene in which they agree to a "minute" of silence in a cafe, the soundtrack cuts out entirely for 36 seconds, and Franz brings it back by saying in French, "Enough of that."
The theater audience chuckled at many points, but no modern comedy producer would have been satisfied with that subdued reaction. Afterward, my group was split between those who appreciated it as something different and those who didn't know what to make of it. I fall in the latter camp. It took me too long to understand the points of a lot of moments, and I'm still not sure I get enough.
The film is New Wave, all right. It reminds me more of Breathless than of anything else by Godard. But this entry doesn't have the same caliber of acting, dialog, or cinematography. It is only fitfully entertaining -- not enough to bring me back for more.
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