November 6, 2009
"Arthur said they'd wait for night to do the job, out of respect for second-rate thrillers. «How do we kill all that time?», asked Odile. Franz had read about an American who'd done the Louvre in nine minutes 45 seconds. They'd do better. Arthur, Franz and Odile beat Jimmy Joh...( read more)nson by two seconds."
Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, in its English title, though I prefer to use the original French one, 'cause I just love how it sounds) is the story of how three vapid youths can conspire to pull off a grand robbery without having even the slightest clue what they're doing and fail miserably while still considering it a success. Odile (Anna Karina) is presumably dating Franz (Sami Frey), a boy from her English class, but while there falls in love with his friend Arthur (Claude Brasseur). Arthur and Franz are thieves, or they're trying to be thieves, and somehow learn that Odile lives in a house that contains a large sum of money. She becomes their accomplice and the heist is on.
Thanks to Godard's unique brand of genius, Bande à part is at the same time much better than it has any right to be and more puzzling than it should be. Apparently, he doesn't find it necessary to include a scene where the idea of the robbery is hatched, instead jumping us from Arthur and Odile's meeting to a scene where they discuss where the money is. They also don't bother to really plan for the heist beyond the point of figuring out what day they'll do it. They decide to have an actual minute of silence where all the audio is dropped from the scene, just to see how long it really is, and then end the minute with a long dance scene. To a casual observer, this seems pointless - the result of a serious use of light drugs by Godard, quiçá - and they may be right. But when you couple this with how inept the robbery goes (no one bothers to make sure the door is unlocked before they get there and they leave a ladder propped up against the side of the building), it becomes apparent that what Godard is doing is showing us just how irresponsible they are and how arbitrary this robbery is. That that is precisely the point.
These aren't professional thieves with fancy gadgets, blueprints and experience. These are three bored kids obsessed with old Hollywood B-films who think it would be fun to steal some money. They don't know what the hell they're doing. And how do we know this? Well, they spend the time they should spend doing basic things like getting the actual layout of the house by dancing. It feels like a poor choice by Godard, but it's really just a poor choice by his characters and his narrator interrupts the dance to remind us that they're thinking of such important topics as how their breasts look in a sweater.
The answer, of course, is just fine. Anna Karina, at 24 and only six years after moving to France, looks as gloriously beautiful as any woman on this planet can possibly and humanly look - as far as I'm concerned. The scene in the English class when she's flirting with Arthur could teach even the most inept woman how to seduce a man using only her eyes. It's really quite distracting. She gives the best performance of the trio, as she's being torn in various directions and obviously is the most targeted member of the triangle, but the two male leads do solid jobs as well.
In the end, the heist goes horribly wrong, but thankfully the film does not - quite the opposite. Godard sees to it that every scene is at very least compelling, even if it doesn't seem to be advancing the plot all that much. To put it differently, there are times when it seems the film is more cool than good, but its influence - I mean, "bored kids planning a heist", how many times has that been done since 1964? - and utter charm is undeniable. Several shots (a couple of scenes even) have been stolen - and yes, that's the word - by lesser directors, and if you look closely, you can just make out Quentin Tarantino's next ground-breaking film. All you have to do is pretend Anna Karina is Uma Thurman.
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