The Little Gangster

Marc is an angry teenager, bored in Sète. A phone call tells him he has a sister he has never met, and he decides to find her. He takes the pistol his mother found, steals money from a shop, and a policeman stops him on the way. Marc pulls the gun and tells the officer to take him to his sister. Jacques Doillon's film sets up the hostage-taking not as suspense but as two people getting to know each other inside a car. Richard Anconina plays the policeman. Gérald Thomassin, who plays Marc, was an unknown boy at the time and this film brought him notice. Doillon is known for films about children and young people; here too he judges nobody.