Jean Vigo achieved a mature masterpiece with this movie, his only full-length feature film, made in 1934 just before his death at the age of 29, now in a restored version. Combining simplicity and delicacy with enormous sophistication and technique, it is an urban pastoral that to an extraordinary degree inspires love – both love for the film and love generally.

Dita Parlo is Juliette, who marries Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain. For their honeymoon, they will go on a journey on his craft, L’Atalante. The boat is somehow both cramped and yet as unexpectedly capacious as a haunted house. They are joined by the eccentric seadog Père Jules (Michel Simon).

Juliette and Jean’s relationship almost founders entirely, and yet this expedition cannot quite be reduced to a metaphor for love’s pilgrimage. It is too playful, anarchic, erotic and surreal. When Jules produces a fearsomely sharp knife, the dismayed Juliette sticks out her tongue – and for a second you think it is going to suffer the same fate as the eyeball in Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. Cinematographer Boris Kaufman captures unforgettable, dream-like images. L’Atalante manages to be more modern than anything being made today.

• L’Atalante is in UK cinemas from 5 December.