The Nada Gang

Nada, named after a group of Spanish anarchists, is a small, disorganised French band that cannot agree with itself. They kidnap the United States ambassador to France after one of his regular visits to a brothel. While they quarrel among themselves about what to do with him, the police start rounding up suspects to destroy the group. As the violence rises on both sides, what the film is actually saying comes clear: the state adopts its opponent’s methods in order to finish it, and the difference between them disappears. Claude Chabrol adapted it from Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel, a book written against institutions and state order and close to nihilism. The traces of May 1968 are everywhere in it. Fabio Testi, Michel Duchaussoy and Lou Castel are in the cast. It is a French and Italian co-production running a hundred and thirty-two minutes.