Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

John McElwain The film is based on Élisabeth Fanger's autobiographical story, J'Avais Dix Huit Ans of (translated as either "I was 18" or possibly "When I was 18"). She was 18 and in her last year of high school when she fell in love with Sid Mohamed Badaoui, a bank robber. She was still 18 a few months later when she fled with her lover and started her 2 years as a fugitive in Spain, Morocco and Greece.Along with Garrel's more notable effort, Les Amants Réguliers, these two French filmmakers (both over 60 years old) might be trying to re-live their youth and make a film they could have made 30 or 40 years before. They aspire to create cinema like the best of the French filmmakers a few years their senior, but fail to note that these successful French film makers from the 60's and 70's made deeply personal films. It's not the pacing of the efforts that is at fault, but a lack of anything concrete to say. Just a long dose of ennui with a little existential nausea thrown in for good measure.

Chris Knipp This black-and-white thriller romance sneaks up and grabs you with an intimate but almost wordless portrait of doomed love. If it loses you toward the long end of the flight the heroine goes on, it's because the psychological portrait doesn't find the intimate "objective correlatives" the two principals alone provided to start: Jacquot's moody "Amazonian" muse, Isild Le Besco (Lili), and her poetic and dangerous "ephebe"Arab lover, Ouassini Embarek (Bada).Jacquot, whose earlier films have been glossy and studded with stars like Isabelle Huppert and Danielle Auteuil, stripped to basic DV for this character-centered Seventies "fugue" that he has said does just what he wanted to do, 24 frames per second. Without the complications of an elaborate production, working on location in Morocco, Spain and Greece and in a "grand appartement bourgeois" like a sparer version of the one in Bertolucci's "Dreamers," tight close-ups and a free-swinging camera spin out a compulsive study of obsessive, out-of-control wandering.The girl studies drawing, not very seriously. Escaping a tiresome boy, she and a girlfriend go into a louche restaurant where they meet a couple of pretty smooth petty hoodlums. In the background lurks the dark, long-necked Bada, whom Lili goes home and draws a portrait of. The scene is set. She and her girlfriend go out dancing with the two guys. Embarek, who won't give his name, comes home with Lili and won't leave. Their passion is soon sealed. The girl is ready to dump her comfortable background and risk all. The boy buys her baubles with suspicious wads of cash.Nothing gets in the way of this romance. Not even a call that he's in deep trouble, on the run from police. Can he come there? Yes, she says. He brings an accomplice with another bourgeois girlfriend. Then the running starts, and the fear. They've got fake passports, but no better trick to get the money over into Spain than sneaking off a train. Going into Morocco later they stuff it inside all their clothes. It's like a long vacation. They live well. Then the hot money can't be traded without big losses and they start living poor.Eventually there's a snag at Greek customs and Lili is kept from the other three. They're scared and leave her at the airport. She begins wandering on her own, desperately hoping that Bada will find her again, as he has promised her he would always do. This is where the film, which had the intense impulsiveness of its title ("Right Away"), begins to slow down.The subplots of people helping Lili in Athens aren't particularly memorable or relevant, and her long depressive silences clash with her sudden smiles. Eventually her voice-over picks things up and explains her way back home, where she's brought to justice as an accomplice of her vanished, but condemned lover.She gets off with probation and finds a job with Club Med on an island -- which was where Bada said he wanted to end up. But he's no more. And Club Med is an anticlimactic ending for this frantic, hypnotic tale. Jacquot worked with great freedom, but he needed to edit more closely and rethink his second half. If twenty or thirty minutes had been trimmed from the girl's wanderings and a few more revealing scenes had been added, the film wouldn't have gotten bogged down in the true story its based on, whose psychological aspects the director needed to reinvent more thoroughly.Nothing can completely spoil the breathless intensity of the first half hour. Jacquot's involvement with his young muse and the chemistry between her and her Arab lover are reinforced by spare scenes and dialogue and the simple black and white images -- even though lacking the beauty and tonal range of real black and white film stock -- create a memorable mood. Le Besco and Embarek are very good indeed and the camera caresses their faces and bodies just enough to make you not forget. But working free doesn't mean not having to edit tightly. I think this story needed to end differently to be true to its promise. The psychological portrait has to be more penetrating to justify the abandonment of the film noir excitement that we began with. It's too bad something so intense and economical has to end up dragging. Even so, Jacquot's new spare style links brilliantly with the whole film tradition of doomed criminal lovers that's as rich in French as in American cinema.

jotix100 Benoit Jacquot takes a real story from the 70s to base his film. "A tout de suite" photographed in black and white by Caroline Campeter, tries to capitalize on the mood and atmosphere of better made French movies of an earlier period.The young woman, Lili, at the center of the film, is a woman from a bourgeois home. Evidently, although nothing is made clear, her parents are divorced, or at least are separated. The big apartment where she lives with her father and sister seems to be the refuge for stray characters this girl feels attracted to.First, when we first encounter her, she is in bed with another young woman, who is a fellow student in her drawing class. There is a hint of lesbianism, although nothing is clear. Lili and the friend later meet a shady character who invites them to go dancing. In the boite, Lili meets Bada, a Moroccan, who she feels immediately attracted to. This chance meeting will prove to be Lili's downfall as she embarks in a partnership with a couple of bank robbers trying to escape justice in France.The film's best asset is Isild Le Besco, who as Lili makes the best of the central role. Ms. Le Besco is a beautiful woman who one sees in all her splendor. This is an actress who has no problems being naked in front of the camera that clearly adores her. Her character is a complex one. The other players, none of whom we are acquainted with, do their jobs well.Mr. Jacquot film has a feel of being a documentary in the way the action is presented. "A tout de suite" is only notable for the character study of Lili, but we don't feel involvement with the rest of the people we meet. It's a disturbing film that, judging from the empty theater where we saw it, doesn't seem to have caught the imagination of the public.

SONNYK_USA The good news (for guys) is that rising French actress Isild Le Besco ("The Cost of Living") is shaping up to be France's answer to American starlet Scarlett Johansson. Both actresses are alike physically with their long blonde hair and full lips, but Isild is far less shy when it comes to full back and/or frontal nudity.The bad news is that this practically dialogue-free excursion into the life of criminals on the run is only compelling if you remind yourself that this film based on a true story. Otherwise, the coupling of Le Besco's unnamed character with a young Moroccan has little chemistry if any.Set in the 70's, director Benoit Jacquot has shot in B&W to make his use of archive footage seem less obtrusive, but the marked contrast between the worn newsreels as his crystal clear photography negates that subterfuge. Plus none of the actors seems to have any sensibility of the period either, probably since many of them weren't even born in the 70's.Story revolves around a 19 year old art student (Le Besco) who meets a guy in a bar and falls immediately for his Moroccan friend. She learns later (on the TV news) that both men are bank robbers so she does what any teenager in love would do - she goes with them. Action moves from France to Spain, then Morocco and Greece. On paper you'd think this film would move along fluidly but depending on your identification with the characters this could be the longest 96 min. of your life.The film does get interesting in the last reel when the heroine realizes the error of her ways just after a sexual spree revealed in some explicit sex scenes.Worth a look (how often do you get to see B&W photography these days anyway).