Lili, a charmed upper-class art student, meets a mysterious Moroccan at a nightclub. They spend the night together. A few days later she gets a phone call from this self-assured suitor explaining that he is in the middle of a bank robbery that has gone wrong and he needs a place to hole up for a while. Soon, he and the only accomplice to survive the botched robbery show up on her doorstep with a pile of cash. Cue every New Wave "love on the run" cliché you can muster, toss in a continental flair, and polish it off with a crisply realized black and white DV cinematography and you have 2004’s Cannes prizewinner, A tout de suite.


Bada, an amateur Moroccan ganster, is a 21st century version of Jean-Paul Belmondo. He is every bit as self-absorbed and charismatic, but not nearly as likable. In Breathless, Belmondo’s character wasn’t a criminal as much as he was an ill-fated poser. For him, crime was an escape from the hum-drum of the modern middle class not as much for the cash it provided as for the thrills (and the girls). Would it be offensive to think of him as a noir counterpart to Tati’s Hulot? In A toute de suite, Bada and his compatriots steal from others for a much less noble and theatrical reason; they just need cash to cruise the Cote d’Azur. Lili, Bada, his accomplice, and his girlfriend flee to Spain, where the resolute Lili attempts to keep up even though she finds herself remarkably out of her depth. After the stolen cash turns out to be marked, the illusion crumbles and Lili is dumped at customs in Greece.


As Lili finds herself abandoned so far from home, the film comes to a screeching halt. Jacquot’s sharp tracking and crisp edits give way to rich and labored shots of Lili as a complete blank, apparently numbed by her carelessness. At times biting the hand that is feeding him, here Jacquot seems to turn a few New Wave conventions on their head. We are not really disturbed by the jaunty carelessness that leads to Belmondo’s demise in Breathless. The splashy score and playful storytelling allow us to not take it very seriously. But Lili’s distance from home, morally and geographically, is appalling and Jacquot immerses the viewer in it as the film loses all sense of timing and direction. Her story is far removed in tone from the classic noir tales it often mimics.


In terms of style, while the grainy candor of DV recalls the ad hoc feel of the early 60’s New Wave cinema, Jacquot’s camerawork is aware of its limitations. He monopolizes on its sharp tones, and as the film becomes a quiet character study of Lili in her dismay, Jacquot abstracts an impressive emotional portrait of youthful regret. Jacquot’s gentility is refreshing; this half of the film is as sensitive and private as an early Chantal Ackerman. It is unfortunate that Jacquot’s back catalogue isn’t as publicized as it should be. La fille seule (1995), and Le septieme ciel (1997), and Pas de scandale (1999) all played to small, but appreciative audiences. Seemingly content to work in relative obscurity, Jacquot’s films are candid snapshots of modern European life. Often, as is the case with A tout de suite, his films devolve into visual meditations in which we are allowed to investigate his backgrounds at our own pace. His slow, often dialogue intense films recall the French cinema of Rohmer rather than catchier fare that is given more access to independent distribution.