Full Speed (1996)

Recent immigration, especially from North Africa, may have engendered a lot of social stress in France, but it has certainly helped enrich that country's films, which increasingly reflect a society no longer smugly rooted in bourgeois custom. Gael Morel's ''Full Speed,'' an enjoyably corny Gallic ''Rebel Without a Cause,'' is set in a French suburb where young Algerian immigrants are menaced by racist skinheads, and middle-class students view the North Africans as the exotically sexy equivalent of American homeboys. The movie has a lot in common with Andre Techine's ''Wild Reeds,'' not only in its use of two of the actors from that 1995 film (in which Mr. Morel played the lead), but in its portrayal of French youth as both sexually precocious and wildly romantic.

''Full Speed,'' whose four main characters are all in their late teens and early 20's, is a fable of exploitation, betrayal and passion among four intense young people. The villain of the piece is a handsome 19-year-old writer named Quentin (Pascal Cervo) whose first novel has created a stir and made him a literary poster boy for his generation.

Quentin based the book on the adventures of his best friend, Jimmy (Stephane Rideau), who belongs to a gang of North African immigrants, and he has promised to pay Jimmy back by helping him get a job as a radio disk jockey. But when the ambitious young author jumps at the chance to go to Paris and taste the rewards of being a literary enfant terrible, he all but turns his back on Jimmy and his friends.

Quentin is also professionally canny enough to know he has to find colorful material for a second novel. Before leaving for Paris, he pursues a handsome young Algerian immigrant named Samir (Meziane Bardadi), who is gay, specifically to plunder his life story for material. Playing a come-hither game with Samir, who is lovesick for him, the resolutely heterosexual Quentin extracts and copywrights the young Arab's painful story of his Algerian love affair with a boy who died in a tragic shooting accident. Once Quentin has gotten the story, he drops Samir and indicates his disgust with homosexuality.

Meanwhile Quentin's headstrong girlfriend, Julie (Elodie Bouchez), falls in love with Jimmy, who remains fiercely loyal to his friend and tries to fend her off. But Julie is as determined to possess Jimmy as Quentin is to possess Samir's story, and eventually she baits him into literally throwing her down in the mud.

The movie's most treacherous scene is an intimate birthday party for Quentin shortly before he is to leave for Paris. Samir mopes around unhappily while the deceitful Julie plays the role of Quentin's loyal girlfriend even though she has begun an affair with Jimmy. The story takes several melodramatic turns after Jimmy saves Samir from a savage beating at the hands of local thugs and is himself nearly killed.

Although ''Full Speed,'' which opens today at the Quad Cinema, has scenes set in discos, on motorcycles and on the street, it's anything but a realist film. Keeping the camera focused on its four main characters' wonderfully expressive faces, it is an unblushing ode to youth and beauty with a tart political subtext. For in the end, Quentin and Julie, as appealing as they are, are homegrown colonialists who are so self-centered and politically myopic that they barely recognize they are exploiting their friends as heedlessly as any occupying force in a North African country. You don't have to leave your hometown to act like a colonial oppressor.

FULL SPEED

Written (in French, with English subtitles) and directed by Gael Morel; director of photography, Jeanne Lapoirie; edited by Catherine Schwartz; produced by Laurent Benegui; released by Strand Releasing. At the Quad Cinema, 13th Street, west of Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Village. Running time: 82 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Pascal Cervo (Quentin), Elodie Bouchez (Julie), Stephane Rideau (Jimmy) and Meziane Bardadi (Samir).