A GIRL IS A GUN / UNE AVENTURE DE BILLY LE KID (1971)
Directed by Luc Moullet
100 minutes
"A deliberately miscast Jean-Pierre Léaud – in all of his Parisian, fidgety angst – stars as the legendary Billy the Kid in this shaggy acid western…. Having single-handedly held up the Wells Fargo stagecoach, the improbable hero struggles to transport his loot when he (quite literally) stumbles across Ann and forcibly enlists her help. Cruelty soon gives way to romance and complicity amid a backdrop of farcical vengeance and a haze of trippy surrealism. Edited by Jean Eustache and scored by the filmmaker's brother, Patrice Moullet, A GIRL IS A GUN is a low-budget riff on the great American westerns, a nod to Howard Hawks, that veers closer to a comedic version of Philippe Garrel's psychedelic desert Zanzibar films. Shot in just six days with a tiny crew, the film is a strange mix of homage, imagination, spoof, and sonic and visual dissonance enhanced by the extreme otherworldliness of Luc Moullet's favorite jagged landscape." –Andréa Picard, TIFF