A flaky French pastry molded around a twenty-two-year-old suicidal gamine and the middle-aged professional knife-thrower who recruits her (from the bottom of the Seine) as his nothing-to-lose assistant. Or in another word, target. The capering camera, when it can manage to sit still (when it is not, for example, buzzing around from a fly's point of view), is besotted with the gap-toothed, pixie-haired ingénue, Vanessa Paradis, who never seems to go anywhere near her ostensible character. (Even the dependable Daniel Auteuil, who evidently trained for his role at the Mel Brooks School of Knife-Throwing, looks a bit lost.) And for all the blandishments bestowed on Mlle. Paradis, the luscious black-and-white photography cannot by itself forge a bond with the Classic French Cinema. Its allegiance belongs more with the Gimcrack French Cinema. Directed by Patrice Leconte. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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