L'Apprentissage de la ville

Throughout his very short life, Luc Dietrich, the author of the novel «L’Apprentissage de la Ville» and the hero of this film, was constantly swinging back and forth between a life of abject poverty and one of wealth and luxury; between Lucrèce, a young woman he idealized and Arlette, a woman of the world who had saved his life; between the ascetic temptation of a spiritual, philosophical quest and the more destructive temptation of a life of crime and its secrecy. Luc's education is first and foremost an education in women, in the dark secret of the streets, in closed windows, in the violence of a knife fight, or in a smile rejected, in wandering, in the world, in the great and the small,in the city which protects him, where he lays himself open....

(http://www.archipel33.fr/site/content/view/357/4/lang,fr/)