The perennial theme of French cinema—l’amour fou—is wonderfully updated in this tale of an illegal Tunisian immigrant and his struggle to stay in France. La faute à Voltaire begins with observational sequences following the daily reality of young Jallel as he deals with immigration officials and life in a shelter. When a volatile relation with a single mother lands Jallel in a mental hospital, he meets another woman, played by celebrated French actress Elodie Bouchez, and the troubled gamine and the lonely immigrant form a couple, only to find that the emotional problems of one complicate the legal troubles of the other. Roughly translated, the title means “Blame it on Voltaire,” a somewhat ironic reference to Voltaire as one of the fathers of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.”