--- description: Find out why "CQ" is on TIME's list of the 50 most underappreciated movies of the 21st Century. title: 'CQ' Is on The 50 Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ba89542ca0f1419/6998cbd29fbc7c0f37d9aa17/Underappreciated-Movies-CQ.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Feb 04, 2026 # _CQ_ Roman Coppola by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/) ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic  Angela Lindvall and Jeremy Davies in CQ, 2001. Angela Lindvall and Jeremy Davies in CQ, 2001.United Artists / Everett Collection The movie references in Roman Coppola’s 2001 debut feature as director, _CQ_, spin out so freely and nimbly that you eventually stop keeping track of them. Godard’s _Two or Three Things I Know About Her_, Mario Bava’s _Danger: Diabolik_, Fellini’s _8 ½_: all these and more present themselves in some fashion in Coppola’s clip-art symphony about what it takes to make movies, or even just to love them. In _CQ_, Paul (Jeremy Davies), an American film editor living in 1969 Paris, is stuck working on a pop-culture confection he loathes, a European-produced science-fiction fantasy called _Dragonfly_. He feels it’s beneath him: he longs to make his own film, a serious one, and he borrows equipment from work to shoot various random objects—a plant in the window, a half-used bar of soap—in arty black-and-white. He also films himself talking in ponderous loops; his live-in French girlfriend, Marlene (Élodie Bouchez), witnesses these proceedings and rolls her eyes, literally and figuratively. Paul is the stand-in here for every young, tortured filmmaker we’ve ever come to know and love-hate, and Coppola knows this: his movie is brushed with playful irony. But a wriggly turn of happenstance leads Paul to make peace with _Dragonfly,_ not least because he has become obsessed with both its star, a shy former student named Valentine (Angela Lindvall), and the character she plays. Dragonfly, a high-class, high-priced futuristic spy, slinks through the movie in a peach-leather jumpsuit, running and leaping in soft, flat little boots. She’s a seductress nonpareil (her chief mark is Billy Zane’s cartoon revolutionary Mr. E) and she loves her job: when she’s paid by the government syndicate she works for (the money shoots straight into her futuristic pad through a little slot), she rolls around on her puffy bed in purring ecstasy as the bills flutter around her. If you’ve seen Bava’s _Danger: Diabolik_—or even if you haven’t—the image will make you laugh, and marvel. Roman Coppola—son of Francis, brother of Sofia—is best known as a music-video director and as a [co-writer of Wes Anderson films](https://time.com/10223/on-the-night-train-with-wes-anderson/ "undefined") like _The Darjeeling Limited_ and _Moonrise Kingdom_. But _CQ_, ultra-stylish and whimsically sexy, is his real gem. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/"},"headline":"CQ","datePublished":"2026-02-04T12:52:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T01:04:34.857Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/","keywords":["movies"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ba89542ca0f1419/6998cbd29fbc7c0f37d9aa17/Underappreciated-Movies-CQ.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"creator":"Stephanie Zacharek","articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ba89542ca0f1419/6998cbd29fbc7c0f37d9aa17/Underappreciated-Movies-CQ.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/","name":"CQ"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/2Xfr54wO/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2026-02-04T12:20:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/2Xfr54wO.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/","duration":"PT1M22S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/50-most-underappreciated-movies/7353496/cq/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```