Comment

Contrary to the other scenes, this sequence is filmed entirely from the point of view of Nina, who we see on screen. Unlike in the other scenes there’s never really a reverse shot on the boy. It’s all seen from her perspective, which underlies the subjective, hand held feel of what she sees as she moves around. The other characters only exist in relation to how she perceives the situation, including the young man who’d given her a pack of cigarettes at the start of the clip.

The pool table offers up a little stage to allow Nana (Anna Karina) to evolve, where she'll improvise her dance, set against the backdrop of a much larger room as the jukebox plays its perfectly timed song. Throughout the dance she plays constantly with the space between her and the boy, stretching away from him in one moment, only to ping back towards him a moment later, just to entice him. The annoying presence of a third party is here provided by Nana’s pimp, sat at a nearby table, who does nothing, unaware of the discrete romantic encounter taking place under his nose.

There is another third party acting as a protagonist in this scene, the filmmaker himself, who was in real life the husband of the actress on screen. She’s clearly dancing as much for her husband and his camera as she is for the boy in the fictitious world of the film.