I Don't kiss = J'embrasse pas

Manuel Blanc is Pierre, a young provincial adolescent who leaves his village to settle in Paris and become an actor. However, the big city proves difficult and expensive and when Pierre loses his job as a hospital orderly he soon finds himself working as a street prostitute. As his dreams disappear and his soul becomes hardened, it is only through his love for the enigmatic Ingrid (Emmanuelle Beart), who also works the streets, that Pierre can hold on to any aspirations for beauty and love. But Ingrid belongs to her pimp and Pierre’s desire soon leads to an inevitable tragic conclusion. Utilising the conventions of melodrama - including the cliched story of the “whore with the heart of gold” - Techine builds a compelling and gritty story of underclass life on the streets. Shifting from almost documentary style examination of the lives of the hustlers, junkies and criminals in the Paris underworld, to highly expressionistic colours and mise-en-scene for the fragile love affair between Pierre and Ingrid, “I Don’t Kiss” becomes a rhapsodic and moving account of the damages inflicted by both poverty and fate. In French with English subtitles.