Thirteen-year-old Talia gets into a fight with her abusive stepfather. He has just returned home from an unexplained absence and has only but contempt for her. She threatens to tell the police about an accusation of sexual abuse made by her young girlfriend. She fears for the safety of her little sister. Her friend doesn't want to relive the incident and suffer more trouble. The stepfather orders Talia to get out. She takes her pet pit bulldog and runs away from home. The dog, Kim, is about all she has to cherish anyway. Her mother appears only briefly later on and it seems that she has made a choice to keep the small income provided by the stepfather rather than protect her children from him.
Talia goes to the dreary Pantin projects near Paris to find a friend she might stay with. The friend has moved away to a foster home. She is aided by a group of four early teen boys who survive on petty theft and being couriers for the drug deals of the older guys. What the boys really want is to get her dog to sell to these older boys. It is the older boys who rule the streets and get the petiets freres, the little brothers, to do their dirty work. The area is populated mostly by African and Arabic and mixed ethnic immigrants where racial tensions simmer but stay under the surface. They have lives no better than Talia's.
Her first night away from home, Kim is stolen and Talia is like a pit bull herself in her ferocious anger and determination to get the dog back. Someone nicknames her Mike Tyson. One of the boys, Iliès, likes her and wants to give the dog back but the others disagree. They pretend to help her find Kim but in this directionless and unguided world, soon the dog is fighting in abandoned buildings and making small-time money for the older boys. The heartbreaking fatal outcome of the gentle Kim is a metaphor for the all too likely fate of these marginal kids. French director Jacques Doillon has a gift for conveying the child's eye view, as he did so well in Ponette, his other film most widely seen in the United States. In that story, a very young girl who has lost her mother in a car accident is unable to speak.
After Talia learns the fate of her treasured pet, she phones her mother, in an attempt to reconcile. She responds to her mother's half hearted effort to bring her daughter home by saying, "Are you certain? Because when you say you aren't sure I know that I can't trust you."
The documentary-like style lends itself well to the story line and feels like we are actually following these young unfortunates, several of whom use their real names as those of their characters. Each moment is lived at a fast pace and without any reflection or introspection on events that for them instantly become part of the past.
The ending takes an unexpected turn when Iliès steals a ring for Talia, someone else smashes a store window and steals a wedding gown and the growing gang has a celebration. It is a scene reminiscent of the 1966 film King of Hearts when the inmates become the masters of the insane asylum. This ending is not very believable, nor are the street scenes that look more like pleasant, green suburbs than desolate poverty projects, but overall, this film is a touching and realistic look at these disaffected, but not quite hopeless youths.
DVD