Predating the visual and thematic preoccupations of the French New Wave by a good five years, La Pointe Courte is an interesting, but ultimately failed experiment in mixing disparate filmic approaches. Half of the film is a loose, neorealistic account of locals in a Mediterranean fishing village, while the other half is a heavy-handed account of a marriage in crisis shot like a Bresson film. Either approach is valid, but when intercut together the Bressonian nonacting comes across as pretentious and theatrical, making us wish Varda had just stuck with the locals.