Cinema: New Wave Felony

Band of Outsiders, another backward-looking venture into crime, is a prank by France’s prolific Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless), a wayward but talented wonder who fills the gap between his more inspired movies by sketching out such trifles as Outsiders. Heroine Anna Karina plays a wistful student who meets two ne’er-do-wells and helps them plan the robbery of her aunt’s chateau. They bungle the job, but meanwhile abandon themselves to a couple of amusing Godardian escapades—taking over a cafe with an impudent little dance of alienation, romping through the Louvre in about nine minutes to beat the record set by a busy American tourist. The rest is pretty random stuff, discomfitting evidence that Godard’s blazing love affair with the art of film sometimes resembles nothing so much as a schoolboy’s crush.