Bonnie and Clyde à la Française

"À tout de suite," based on Elisabeth Fanger's memoir "When I Was 19," is a tale of hazardous love. Lili (Isild Le Besco) is an art student living a safe if dull existence with her father and sister in 1970s Paris. Hungry for excitement, she falls for a young, taciturn Moroccan man, Bada (Ouassini Embarek), a gangster soon to be involved in a bank robbery that leaves one man dead.

Lili provides shelter for the fugitive Bada and his accomplice, then impulsively accompanies them on a harrowing, cross-continent escape through Spain, Morocco and Greece. Ultimately abandoned, penniless and nearly paralyzed with fear, Lili surrenders to fate and the dubious kindness of strangers.

Movie review

"À tout de suite," with Isild Le Besco, Ouassini Embarek. Directed by Benoit Jacquot. 95 minutes. Not rated; nudity and intense sexual situations. In French with English subtitles. Varsity.

The desultory story line of "À tout de suite" would be laughable in a conventional movie structure, where only so many plot twists are tolerated by a skeptical audience. But writer-director Benoit Jacquot ("Sade"), who came of age during the French New Wave of the 1950s and '60s, is attracted to the episodic, make-up-the-rules-as-you-go "whoosh" of Fanger/Lili's misadventure.

In an obvious though not self-congratulatory way, Jacquot's "À tout de suite" is one big New Wave quote.

A mutable drama about youth on the run, the film's retro appeal includes black-and-white cinematography and a Truffaut-esque fascination for parallels between the characters' wild flight and filmmaking itself as a wide-eyed, open-ended experience. When Lili meanders into a Spanish stadium to watch a bullfight, the scene doesn't advance the story conventionally, but it broadens both Lili's and the film's sense of discovery.

That buzz, and Le Besco's brave performance, are enough to make the film worthwhile.