A Tout de Suite is one of those little-seen and little-known French films that play for a couple of weeks at the Angelika theater in New York City- and subsequently get a playing once or twice on the Sundance channel- and it stays fairly in obscurity for the rest of cinema's days. I saw it first in the theater on a whim, and I was pleasantly (if that's the word to use) surprised on how effective the minimalistic style used by Benoît Jacquot helped suppress the probable insufferable melodrama.
It tells the story of Lili (Le Besco), who is 19 and is surrounded by a kind of teenage wasteland, though mostly through her relationship with a man who is a thief. He gets in a botched bank robbery and has to hide away, and she does so with him...all the way out of France and into a Muslim country (or what seems like it, maybe it was Morocco). It's not anything that leads to any big point about adolescent angst or disillusionment or even about bourgeois discontent, but it's a fascinating film for what Jacquot decides to show with small scenes, of moments so contemplative just based around how he and his DP shoot the actors (mostly in close-ups), and how time feels not totally joined together in a weird way. And while IMDb says different, as I remembered seeing it the Pink Floyd song Shine on You Crazy Diamond was used to fantastic effect, in a similarly subdued manner.
Nothing is very highly charged with emotions, and if they are it's only in small, sudden bursts; everything is so under the surface it's as if everything will come out at the seams as Lili wanders in a daze around a foreign country- a true Lost in Translation scenario, all based on a faux- love situation.
Bottom line, if you want to watch some good- and yes, pretentious- film-making, this is one to keep an eye on for a real late-night screening on IFC or Sundance or whatever, and see if it's worth the couple of hours. I was very glad I took a chance back in 2005 in that near empty theater, even if I haven't seen the film since, as it has that authentic, independent feeling that leaves one oddly satisfied.
