Little Thief, The/Alone

With few frills and no punches pulled, Erick Zonca, acclaimed director of 1998's DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS, presents two masterful visions of contemporary French youth at its most desperate. In "The Little Thief" (1999), a scrawny, arrogant teenager named "S" (Nicolas Duvauchelle) is fired from his job at an Orleans bakery. Disgusted with what he perceives as his exploitation, S vows never to work again: "From now on, I'll do the screwing," he tells his girlfriend (Emilie Lafarge). S moves to Marseilles and falls in with a rough crowd of burglars led by the Eye (Jean-Jerome Esposito), who gives S a place to stay and puts him to work caring for his aged mother. At ...