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Michel (Martin LaSalle) is an unemployed young man who firmly believes
that he is gifted, but he has no interest in honest work - and yet he
thinks he deserves his slice of the good life. So one day at the
racetrack, he picks a vwallet - and is promptly caught. But when the
police has to let him go scot-free because of lack of evidence, he figures
picking pockets might be a clever way of making an income. He ven goes so
far as to mock the inspector (Jean Pélégri) who had to let him go about
it. At the same time, he starts to totally avoid his best friend Jacques
(Pierre Leymarie) and his dying mother (Dolly Scal), even though he has
fallen in love with Jeanne (Marika Green), mum's neighbour who looks after
her. Soon, picking pockets becomes a profitable business for Michel and
his two accomplices (Kassagi, Pierre Étaix), even if he becomes more and
more plagued by his guiilt he's not even supposed to feel according to his
theories about his own supremacy, plus the inspector he has long decided
to consider a fool, is always close behind him. Ultimately, he flees the
country, tries to make it in Italy and the UK, but returns penniless after
three years, only to find Jeanne has taken over his apartment and has
since had a child from Jacques, a man she doesn't love and has thus never
married. Michel promises to take care of her and the kid, and by some
honest work, too, and for a while that even works fine - but then a man
lures him to the racetrack, and the money the other man wins is too much a
temptation to Michel, who tries to steal is but is instead handcuffed,
since the other man was an undercover policeman. It's only when they're
on opposite sides of the bars of his prison cell that Michel and Jeanne
can confess their love to one another. Widely praised as a
asterpiece, Pickpocket is actually less than perfect: Martin
LaSalle's lead performance is pale and wooden, all characters aside from
Michel are rather flat and lack motivation, and several aspects of the
story are simply underdeveloped, especially the blooming romance between
Michel and Jeanne. That said though, the film has its moments of
greatness, like perfectly marrying its visual style to its subject matter
- the camera perfectly mimicks the point of view of the pickpocket and
presents his work as a sort of ballet - or the matter-of-factness
of its (a bit too) spartanic narrative style that avoids unnecessary
subplots to explain the obvious (though I still think that some portions
of the story are underdeveloped). In all, not a perfect film, but
definitely worth seeing.
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