Philippe Garrel is one of the "children of Godard"-next generation New Wave-but the moniker critics have pinned on him, "the Rimbaud of the French cinema," harks back to Jean Vigo, who was also called that. Garrel is an instinctive master of camera movement and the choreographed tracking shot, and The Inner Scar, an early experimental work, is already a distillation of this predilection: three gorgeous tracking shots, in North Africa, Iceland, and Death Valley, comprise the visual components. Velvet Underground icon Nico, Pierre Clémenti, and Garrel appear in roles "less performed than inhabited-filling screen space in the manner of living objects," as one critic noted. "Garrel's mythology is articulated in a succession of lush romantic images that should excite any audience with their sheer sense of wonder" (New York Film Festival).