The first version of Carax’s alter ego Alex is a dreamy young man who calls himself a cineaste although he has yet to make a film. Recently dumped by his girlfriend, Alex mopes around his tiny apartment until he falls in love with another woman after hearing her voice over an intercom. His quest to find her is the thread upon which is strung a series of set pieces, both comic and sentimental, that amount to a portrait of the artist as a young man in 1980s Paris. The film captures an inextricable entangling of Eros and Thanatos that has haunted all of Carax’s feature films to date. Boy Meets Girl inaugurates the filmmaker’s collaborations not only with actor Denis Lavant but also cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier, whose luminous black-and-white images match a soundtrack alternately erudite and rebellious: David Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg, the Dead Kennedys.