"Bande à Part is in some ways a return by Godard to the world of Breathless - the world of the outsiders, the fringe people. Most of the film takes place in the suburbs of Paris, and Godard and his photographer have succeeded in transforming its essential hideousness into a setting of dreamlike beauty and poignancy. His three characters are trembling on the edge of crime, but as usual with Godard, this does not exclude a kind of hysterical gaiety - dancing on the edge of the volcano, as in one of the greatest of Godard's urban epiphanies: the Madison danced in a café at the gates of Paris." --Richard Roud. Godard describes his "Band à part mood": "characters who live off the cuff and whose speech is recorded directly. It is constructed on the actors. The interesting thing is this sort of fluidity, being able to feel existence like physical matter: it is not the people who are important, but the atmosphere between them. Even when they are in close-up, life exists around them...." (in Milne, "Godard on Godard") .