Notice how the jackets of just about every video, especially the French ones, SHOUT how SEXY the movie is. In Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue," par example, Juliette Binoche and the film are touted as being so, so sexy. But it wasn't, and neither was she. However in "Rendez- Vous" you will see a Juliette Binoche with enough sexual power to awaken a dead man-not to say that this movie is as good as Kieslowski's "Blue." It isn't, but it's not bad.

Binoche is full of energy as a provincial French girl with a flair for the stage new to the lights of gay Paree. She plays fast and loose (and natural) with the men she meets, and dodges some serious trouble before working it out with the man she really wants. Characteristically, Director André Téchiné leads us close to the dark side of sex without really offending our sensibilities.

Jean-Louis Trintignant appears in a small role that anticipates his triumphant creation as the admiring older man in Kieslowski's "Trois Couleurs: Rouge" nine years later.

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André Téchiné made this 1985 film RENDEZ-VOUS before his promising career was established, giving us such fine films as My Favorite Season, The Innocents, The Wild Reeds, Beach Café, Alice and Martin, etc. The sensitivity to character development is tightly wound in this work but some of the finesse that followed his later works is missing. In the end we are left wondering a bit about what happened to almost everyone.

Nina (Juliette Binoche in her first film role) has traveled to Paris from her small home in Toulouse to try her hand at acting and to live the wild life that has been unavailable to her in Toulouse. She beds nearly every man she encounters and acts bit parts in small theaters, barely eking out an existence. Tired of one night stands and sharing quarters with others, she sets out to find her own apartment, stopping in to a realtors office where she encounters Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) who is immediately smitten with her sensual good looks and manner. Having no place to stay Nina agrees to spend a few days with Paulot in a flat shared with the hauntingly strange Quentin (Lambert Wilson). Nina is oddly attracted to Quentin and is somewhat put off by the fact that Quentin is an actor in a sex theater. We discover Quentin narrowly escaped death some time back when the actress playing Juliet to his Romeo was killed. Nina has an approach/avoidance conflict with Quentin, all the while fending off offers by the pathetic Paulot to care for her. Quentin is killed in a car accident, Nina meets the elderly director Scrutzler (Jean-Louis Trintignant in a splendid cameo role) who promises her the role of Juliet in his casting of the Shakespeare drama, and her career as an actress seems to be launched. Full of self doubt and fear stimulated by the ghost-like appearances of the dead Quentin, Nina prepares for the role, copes with Paulot's advances, shares a flat with him, and is finally left in the stage wings with her focus on becoming an actress challenged with her needs for physical and stable love. And we are left there.

Juliette Binoche is very fine in this her 'maiden voyage' and it is a happy finding that she is far more beautiful (as well as a far better actress) in her current more mature state. Lambert Wilson gives a fine performance, finding the line between lurid sexuality and lonely afterlife ghost a position he easily treads. The film definitely has moments but it is only a hint (and a strong one) of just what to expect form the gifted André Téchiné. Not bad for a twenty year old film! Grady Harp

The opening scene of this picture, lead us to two experiences, which we already went through, all of we who travel by train: 1)Looking through the window, one glimpses a station coming near and with it the unknown; 2)or: we hope to retie that we left hanging, be it a friendship relation, business, etc... In this opening scene, the director André Téchiné prepares us to the sparkling show up of a young actress who arrives in Paris searching immediate success. However, her personality must be mold (shape) , like one casts a sword in a forge. The first to take the hammer in front of the anvil, is the manager of a stage play in an obscure theater of Paris, who to take advantage of the situation, try to persuade that Nina (juliette Binoche, here in one of her first roles) is an actress with capital "A". The second, Quentin (Lambert Wilson) a tormented boy, who had caused the death of his beloved, assumes the role of "modeler" and keeps "molding" the character of the also newly arrived to the adult age. More another, Paulot (Wadeck Stanczak) at first courteous and later (understanding that Nina only uses people to arrive where she wants) selfish and cruel in his behavior - in view of the real situation - and finally Scrutzler (Jean Louis Trintignant) delineate the frame all the artists must have: the capacity of understand the essence of what the author wrote (do you remember the listless way Nina reads Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare, without understanding the pain/love of the chief characters?) At the end, sorrowful and not counting with those who "support" her, she starts to upgrade to the human improvement, which is only available by pain. One movie that I classify - in a scale from 1 to 10 - as grade 9 (excellent).