Reviews Of Three Films, And A Rundown Of Events

Extraordinarily sensual and extraordinarily bleak, Claire Denis' Nenette and Boni depicts a world of diffident youth, of estranged families and displaced souls.

The newest release from the talented filmmaker who apprenticed with Jarmusch and Wenders and made her feature debut with Chocolat, the striking autobiographical French-girl-growing-up-in-Africa tale, Nenette and Boni is set in working-class Marseilles, among high-rise apartments and hustlers engaged in phone-card scams and stolen goods.

Its title characters - played by Alice Houri and Gregoire Colin - are sister and brother. Nenette is 15, a student who, in the film's opening moments, clambers out of a boarding school window, over a wall and hits the road. With her luminous skin and faraway stare, Nenette's still very much a girl - but a girl facing problems of womanhood, on the run from a father she detests.

Likewise, Boni, who is 19, has no desire to see his father again (the pair's mother is dead). Intense and solitary, Boni is 19, works in a pizza truck and loses himself in erotic reveries over the local baker (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi); his journal entries are pure pornography, and the best he can do when he enters her shop is stare fiercely at the buxom woman and make a feebly provocative request for an extra-long baguette.

Both Houri and Colin are exceptionally good, handling roles that are largely indrawn and reactive with a quiet, accomplished naturalism. Denis' style is dreamy and eliptical; there are moments of exquisite voluptuousness (a slow pan of the baker's display window, the swollen puff-pastries leading to a shot of the boulangerie sticking her finger into a dollop of cream), and there are moments of desperation, as these characters face their futures with a mix of fear, self-loathing and desultory blankness.

``A Conversation with Claire Denis,'' the festival's spotlight director, is scheduled for 4 to 5 p.m. Saturday at International House. Admission is free.

Saturday

NENETTE AND BONI * * * 1/2

Produced by Georges Benayoun, directed by Claire Denis, written by Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis. With Gregoire Colin, Alice Houri, Jacques Nolot, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Vincent Gallo. In French with subtitles.

Running time: 1:43

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (mature themes, profanity, violence)

Showing at: Ritz Five on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Ritz at the Bourse on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. Denis will attend Saturday.