Love Without Pity

The story in LOVE WITHOUT PITY, a French coming-of-age romance, is a familiar one, but it's told with unusual sensitivity and perceptiveness by writer-director Eric Rochant.

The romantic hero, Hippo (Hippolyte Girardot, who resembles a Gallic Emilio Estevez), is called a parasite at one point. The shoe fits, but he's an uncommonly likable leech. Hippo has structured his life around love. Or so he says. Sharing an apartment with his younger brother Xavier (Jean-Marie Rollin), he's a bright dropout who doesn't work, living off of his parents and profits from his student brother's lucrative drug-dealing sideline. He does nothing much all day beyond making a few de...