Full Speed

"Live fast to have no regrets," observes one of Full Speed's fresh young things. "Live fast to overcome death." It's not a line from your typical post-adolescent angst wallow. Then again, this is a French film.

Yes, even the slacking's more sophisticated in writer/director Ga‘l Morel's overwrought debut. Quentin (Pascal Cervo) is a promising novelist whose impending success rocks his relationships with Julie (Wild Reeds' Elodie Bouchez), his duplicitous amour; Jimmy (Wild Reeds' Stephane Rideau), his volatile best friend; and Samir (Meziane Bardadi), the haunted stranger who desires him.

Amid the muddled melodrama, Morel unleashes striking, wind-whipped images of youthful temerity. A motorcycle rips through the sprawling countryside; later, Jimmy, fueled by cocaine, sprints through a verdant forest. It's pretty and portentous, but lacking ample motivation for the characters' actions, it's pointless, too. For all the existential musings on living fast, Full Speed sputters more often than it soars. At the Coolidge Corner.

-- Alicia Potter