A tout de suite

A concentrated, carefully understated look at teenage confusion that represents a kind of peak in artistic self-assurance for Jacquot, shot in glorious wide-screen black & white. Isild Le Besco is Lili, an art student in 1970s Paris who falls suddenly and hard for a boy who turns out to be a petty crook. Before you know it, she's on the run with him in Europe, and quickly winds up alone and destitute in Athens. The crazy, dizzyingly elliptical progression of the action perfectly embodies the emotional turmoil that Lili is keeping to herself - like most teenagers, she's in far less control than she thinks she is. With its dry, unassuming acuity and its offhanded elegance, A tout de suite goes far beyond the standard French teenage fare with which it was instantly classified. As always with Jacquot, the film is a sentimental education, at once harsh and strangely liberating, happening even when the heroine, perfectly played by Le Besco, doesn't realise it. (KJ)