Quatre Garcons Pleins D'avenir

La Bande des quatre / Gang of Four - by Jacques Rivette (1989)

Four acting students study with the high-class acting coach Constance Dumas and live together in a big Paris house. One by one, a mysterious man approaches the girls, asking questions and telling tales about their former housemate – implying that she may have kept some sinister secrets. Something hidden in the house attests to this. At the same time, the girls struggle in their tough acting class, trying to please the hard-as-nails teacher.

A young Parisian boy, Antoine Doinel, neglected by his derelict parents, skips school, sneaks into movies, runs away from home, steals things, and tries (disastrously) to return them. Like most kids, he gets into more trouble for things he thinks are right than for his actual trespasses. Unlike most kids, he gets whacked with the big stick. He inhabits a Paris of dingy flats, seedy arcades, abandoned factories, and workaday streets, a city that seems big and full of possibilities only to a child's eye.