À Tout De Suite (Right Now)

I watched this superb 2004 French film (with English subtitles) on DVD last night.

It's a thriller, a love story, a meditation on obsession and chance, all the things that make a movie interesting if it's made with skill and care, superb direction and acting, and a willingness to push the edge of what cinema can be.

The movie was directed by French director Benoît Jacquot, whose previous films include "Sade," "A Single Girl" and "The Disenchanted."

Based on Elizabeth Fanger's memoir "J'avais 18 Ans" and with a wonderful soundtrack including Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and the like, the film — in black and white and suffused with the energy of that time — opens in mid-1970s Paris and moves on to Spain, Morroco and Greece, finally returning to Paris.

Isild Le Besco plays and inhabits the main character Lili, a free-spirited 19-year-old art student whose mother tells her, toward the end of the film, as Lili's growing doubt about whether the life she's living is actually a true one, "Women have several lives, one after the other, while men have several lives, often at the same time."

That stopped me in my tracks — literally: I paused the film (the wonderfulness of DVD) to get up and walk around a while and think about that and other stuff before continuing.

The movie — as does any good film — makes you wish it would never end.

Ms. Le Besco would make a great Valerie Plame — at 1% of Scarlett Johansson's price.

Watch three clips from the film here, here and here.

For once, my crack research team earned its keep.