From the mind of Luc Moullet, the unknown genius of the French New Wave, comes this pair of riotous comedies that capture the movement's sense of dislocation and anarchy. "Maybe the best film not made by Godard" (Jean-Marie Straub), The Smugglers is the story of two women who run packages and people between warring nations. A wacky take on the action-adventure tale, the film exploits its low budget to offer a digressive and aggressive slapstick comedy. Jean-Pierre Leaud, the iconic actor of Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, stars as a gunslinger on the run in A Girl Is a Gun, a notorious, psychedelic French western that swings wildly between offbeat comedy and delirious experimentation. Like many nouvelle vague milestones, this tale of lust and revenge is heavily indebted to classic Hollywood films while toying with generic conventions at the same time. In French with English subtitles.

Luc Moullet---France---1967/1971---151 mins.