Boy Meets Girl

French writer/director Leos Carax (Mauvais Sang, Holy Motors, Annette) made his feature film debut in 1984 with this melancholy tale of a fleeting relationship between two tormented young souls who meet one night in Paris. Carax's muse/surrogate/frequent leading man, Denis Lavant, plays Alex, a wannabe filmmaker who never gets much farther in his creative ambition than coming up with titles for the movies he wants to make. He has just been jilted by his lover, who has dumped him in favor of his best friend, Thomas. Alex tries to strangle Thomas near the film's beginning, but Alex is not exactly someone who succeeds at the things he sets his mind to. Mireille Perrier plays a depressed young woman who is also reeling from a failed romance. The two meet at a party and bond over the self-imposed loneliness that fuels them both.

The gorgeous high-contrast black and white cinematography by Jean-Yves Escoffier (who would shoot many Carax films as well as Good Will Hunting, Gummo, and the music video for Johnny Cash's "Hurt") adds to the picture's distinctively French vibe of existential ennui. Boy Meets Girl harkens back to classics of The French New Wave, but its contemporary idiosyncrasies, its pop and punk soundtrack, and the way the characters seem disconnected from the larger society give the film a distinctly modern sensibility and youthful energy. Lavant and Perrier are wonderful at making compelling characters out of these two self-involved souls in love with their own torment, and the supporting cast is filled with great faces saying riveting things that always get moved on from just as they're getting to the most interesting parts (which is apt and quite funny). The film's conclusion is a tad pretentious, but I can forgive the young Carax for such an indulgence in his first picture.