Perhaps drunk on the trip of an instant success (“Breathless”), or disillusioned by the shelving of a personal political bombshell (“Le Petit Soldat”), Jean-Luc Godard’s third film is shockingly self indulgent, and though it remains a lynchpin in the progression of the New Wave (with cinematography by Raoul Coutard, and stunning jump cuts), seen today it’s almost unbearable. The beautiful Anna Karin stars as a sprightly striptease dancer whose fiancé (Jean-Claude Brialy) doesn’t share her want for a child, so to spite him, she seeks the companionship of his best friend, played by “Breathless” star Jean-Paul Belmondo. The story isn’t the problem, it’s Godard’s execution; modeling the film as a “musical comedy”, he peppers the soundtrack with fits and bursts of annoying musical interludes that do little to complement the performances or the story. Of course you can argue that that is Godard’s point, as it would be later in his career, that to make pure cinema is to utilize genre elements in your own unpredictable and symbolic fashion, but to use them in such a way that you’re more contemptuous than honorable, is to suggest an ego beyond its own limitations.