Gut-punchingly authentic with radiant moments of tenderness where least expected, intimate yet not voyeuristic, this first feature by writer-director Camille Vidal-Naquet gets the balance between looking-for-love and settling-for-sensation exactly right.

Sauvage captures the multitude of emotion or lack of, that come with Leo’s tricks. There’s jealousy, pain, excitement, cruelty and even monotonous apathy where you’d least expect it.

There are fleeting moments of wit, bliss and even tenderness amid the gritty severity, as Vidal-Naquet perceptively portrays not just the lonely, drug-fueled rigors of the hustler lifestyle, but the simultaneously competitive and supportive fraternal community that sustains it.

Sauvage is often difficult viewing, and Leo tries our patience and compassion as anyone habitually treating themselves so poorly can. Nevertheless, the film achieves a sort of grace, in moments of sweetness and stillness, when the fullness of Leo’s being—be it ravaged and weary—is palpable and, finally, undeniable.

This is a sexually frank and arrestingly tender perspective of a young man in freefall. It occasionally leans too far into the horrors of street prostitution, but it’s mostly an open-minded view of its shiftless main character.