Jean-Luc Godard directs Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg and Henri-Jacques Huet in this French New Wave classic where a criminal hides out in Paris with his on-off girlfriend.

À Bout de Souffle. Godard. Nouvelle Vague. Oh La La! One of those movies it feels like I’m going to hell for not loving. And I’ve tried. The best experience I’ve had of it was at the cinema in my early twenties. This long delayed revisit reset back my initial teenaged assessment… Bit long for a 100 minute film. Belmondo holds the eye but his Michel is a petty, misogynistic twat. You care little for his stretched out wait to be shot and die in the gutter. Orbiting his downward spiral is Seberg’s elfin Patricia. She is far cooler, sexier, fascinating. When the movie is solely her bobbing around the arrondissement in chic hipster outfits, interviewing arrogant authors about love, I was bolt upright. Her sitting in bed with Belmondo for 30 minutes having circular conversations that go nowhere bored me to tears. Jump cuts, on-location Paris, heartfelt parody of Hollywood crime. I understand why this turned so many heads back in the day. But its progressiveness feels minimal now and maybe it is time for Godard to be left out from the canon.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Breathless (1983)

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