IF AMERICAN CINEMA is about construction, then French cinema is about observation. Erick Zonca (The Dreamlife of Angels) is fast gaining entry to the ranks of brilliant young French directors whose powers of observation drive their cinema; whose fascination with watching humans simply do--do what is irrelevant--underpins a unique and growing body of work whose import will surely one day be reckoned as historical. As with the films of Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Bruno Dumont, and the movement's godmother Claire Denis, Zonca's work reflects a series of concerns bounded by a sensitivity to class, an umbilical connection to place, a meditated looseness of style, and a deep-seated unease with the trajectories of modern French society. Favoring handheld cameras, washed-out hues, and improvisatory and unspectacular acting, the new French cinema is clearly a self-conscious evolution from cinéma vérité, and, in the hands of less talented directors, would doubtless lead to a dead end. Fortunately, as amply demonstrated by Zonca in his new film, The Little Thief, talent is one commodity for which the movement is not lacking.

The Little Thief observes a failed bid for maturity by a cynical young man known simply as S. Played with pellucid perfection by the stunning young actor Nicolas Duvauchelle (Beau Travail), S is a vapid young thug whose greatest ambition is to become a gangster. Joining with a dedicated hierarchy of Marseilles gangsters, S immerses himself in the gangster ethos with energetic, if dim, abandon: He learns to box, he learns to steal, he watches after his boss' prostitute, and, most touchingly, cleans the boss' aged mother's house once a week. For a moment, it appears S is moving up the rungs, his shy sullenness almost breaking away to a subtle confidence. Ultimately, though, S suffers from a void at his very center. His soul, blank and thin, like a sheet of parchment, cannot sustain even the corrupt moral traverse of the criminal code.

Zonca's curiosity about the attitudes of loneliness that haunt life at society's fringes suffuses Little Thief. The film's pregnant belly contains several scenes so stark and quiet in their depiction of S's hapless, devastating, confused solitude, they threaten to shrivel up and vanish, lost in the larger tapestry of S's day-to-day drama. In my favorite, S is seen sketching his gangster name on a notebook cover, thoughtfully, haltingly, with all the importance of destiny itself. In another, he follows the aged mother of his gangland boss through her daily chores, not touching her, not holding doors for her, just following her silently, in blunt ignorance of her age and all that holds it up. They are beautiful moments entirely about the impatience of youth and the heartbreak of dead ambition, and they are the substance of this film. In the end, it is not the story Zonca tells, but the humility and detail of his observations that lift The Little Thief up to the plateau of the sublime.