Shoot the Piano Player is such a gem

• It's a ridiculously well-rounded movie that hits every emotional tone while maintaining and overall playfulness and never diving into deep cynicism. There are suicides, murders, and tragedy, but its charm is relentless.
• It really doesn't seem like a movie that's less than 90 minutes long - and that's a really good thing.
• Obviously very new wave, but doesn't fall prey to the worst stereotypes of the genre.
• Lena is a true ride or die girl.
  
• I identify with Eduard Saroyan.
• A film whose villains carry a musical lighter has to be at least okay.
  

I'm confused by Truffaut

I thought foreign films were supposed to be difficult to enjoy, cynical, and pretentious.  Many of the best ones I've seen have been exactly that, but the two films that I've seen by Truffaut, aren't.  Day For Night and Small Change incredibly charming and lack the bold and borderline [ok, extremely] pretentious flourishes of many other French directors.  It's fairly clear that he's a huge influence on Wes Anderson, whose films are similarly charming and straightforward from a storytelling standpoint while still having a unique stylistic approach.

French, generally, have a reputation for being tough and complex to appreciate.  The food, the artists, the directors, the culture... and so on.  Truffaut bucks this tend.  I'd highly recommend him for people who are open to foreign films but have no taste for pretension or cynicism.