Elliot Lavine is a noir aficionado and former film programmer for the Roxie Cinema.

(La lune dans le caniveau). Scorned though it was, Beineix's Moon in the Gutter is a vertiginous realization of the murky and haunted world of David Goodis. Gérard Depardieu plays Gérard, a stevedore possessed by the acid memory of his sister's rape and subsequent suicide. Each night he returns to the fateful alley and its still visible bloodstain glistening in the gutter. The squalid port where this story festers is a space of sinister artificiality-the palette is skewed toward reds and greens; the lighting reveals pools of unnerving safety; and the denizens are overheated caricatures, emitting libidinous menace. Into this perilous harbor comes Loretta (Nastassia Kinski), an uptowner whose flirtatious purity cuts through the brooding atmosphere. As in the novel, escape is a mocking illusion. Cold yet seductive, lissome Loretta stands beside her blazing red car: a means of escape or not? For his part, Gérard conceals a cruel flaw that drags him back to the derelict streets. And so begins the poetry of the fall.