Eccentric French director Leos Carax continued to impress with his second feature, the offbeat romance Boy Meets Girl, about a depressed and aspiring filmmaker named Alex (Denis Levant) falls in love with a beautiful but suicidal young woman, Mireille (Mireille Perrier).
Alex lives in a garret where he scribes on a wall the urban sites of his great initiation experiences, write love letters on an old typewriter and saves them for his memoirs, frequents downbeat clubs, and engage in petit crime, such as shoplifting books and records.
Both have been recently dejected by their respective lovers. On the eve of his departure for the Army (military service was mandatory in France at the time), Alex crashes a party to meet a woman (Mireille Perrier); her boyfriend left her via intercom.
They meet in a cute way, via an apartment intercom system. Later, Alex encounters Mireille by the Seine. They finally meet in person at a party, where they engage in a long and bizarre conversation over a kitchen table. Their neediness ultimately leads to unanticipated tragedy.
Carax offers wry, sardonic commentary on the desperate need for romantic relationship and the tendency of such affairs to turn sour if not fatal.
Most of the eccentric scenes are set at night, capturing the noted Parisian ambience of intimate and lyrical touches in everyday life as well as bizarre and unanticipated coincidences. One glorious set piece involves an older hearing-impaired movie technician from the silent-film era.
