Dandy

While British mods were listening to The Who and roaring around Brighton on their scooters, their Parisian equivalents - or so Armanet's entertaining debut feature suggests - were discussing Sartre, preening themselves in the sun and working out how best to seduce as many women as possible. The protagonists here, the floppy-haired aesthete Philippe (Simonet) and his rugged Belmondo-like pal Marc (Wiik), are rich kids who certainly don't have to put up with any of the daily humiliations that Phil Daniels and Co endured in Quadrophenia. What might have been a tiresome execise in narcissism and nostalgia is rescued by its self-mocking humour and attractive performances from Simonet and Cécile Cassel (as the dark-haired beauty who throws into question his chauvinistic assumptions about life and love). Writer/director Armanet is the editor of Libération, one of France's best-known newspapers. Whatever his journalistic credentials, he shows considerable promise as a film-maker.