The French are at it again. With the rest of the world only just recovered from the pummelling that La Haine dealt out, it is now the turn of twentysomething would-be genius writer-director-star Beauvois to deliver an assault on filmgoing senses, creating another beautiful mosaic from across the Channel.
Benoit (Beauvois), an art history student terrified at the prospect of his mandatory military service, devises a bloody fake suicide attempt to get him off the hook and back to his lectures, but the plan backfires when the army doctor finds him HIV positive. What follows is Benoit's fall into the romantic, hellbent lifestyle he always idolised. Heroin smuggling, robbery and homosexual prostitution all ensue as he embarks on a hedonistic rollercoaster death-ride, which sprawls to his beloved Italy - where he falls for the enigmatic Claudia (Mastroianni) - and then on to the killing fields of Bosnia.
Beauvois has made a wonderfully acted film of extremes. The shock factor exposes the depravity and futility of life in the fast lane, epitomised in one hypnotic drug-taking sequence that will raise many a moral eyebrow, while the script is peppered with artistic theories on mortality and providence that breathe new life into the old live-fast-die-young doctrine.