Seething with a feral energy that masks genuine tenderness, Camille Vidal-Naquet’s feature debut took the 2018 Critics Week at Cannes by storm. Anchored by a piercing, peripatetic lead performance by Félix Maritaud, Sauvage makes vivid a gay street hustler’s knife’s-edge existence. Both brutal and brutalized, sweet and savage, Maritaud’s prostitute roams from john to john in search of a fix (in the form of sex, drugs, and possibly even love), desperate for both intimacy and freedom, destabilized but ultimately resilient. The intimacies of male bodies both connected and colliding is sensitively captured by cinematographer Jacques Girault, guided by Vidal-Naquet’s assured direction.