'Racer and the Jailbird,' a nice showcase for Exarchopoulos, but falls apart

From the title, ``Racer and the Jailbird'' sounds like an American romp, with zany characters and car chases, something like this generation's ``Smokey and the Bandit.'' It's actually a Belgian movie called ``Le Fidele'' (translated as ``The Faithful''), a dark romantic film that starts out great but wears out its welcome after an hour.

The good news is that it marks the return of Adele Exarchopoulos, who made a huge splash four and half years ago with ``Blue is the Warmest Color.'' She has starred in a number of French language films in the years since, but this is the first to be released here. She has a remarkable spontaneity, introspection and attentiveness. Everything goes straight from her mind onto the screen.

She plays Bibi, an up and coming race car driver, who meets Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts), who seems to be a hotshot importer of cars. They hit it off and immediately plunge into a relationship, but she doesn't quite know what he does for a living, and when he tells her, ``I'm a gangster, and I rob banks,'' she thinks he's joking.

There's a lot of good to be said for the first hour, from the love scenes, which go beyond convincing into downright enviable (OK, you really like each other, we get it), to subtler moments of revelation, as when we see a jolly dinner party with Gigi's friends. They tell stories that are ostensibly funny -- they're all laughing merrily -- but every anecdote has an undertone of cruelty and strangeness. This is not a matter of jokes being lost in the translation. We are meant to be creeped out by these people.

The movie makes an analogy between the adrenaline rush of racing and the rush of pulling off a robbery, while presenting Gigi as a man torn between his criminal life and his deepening emotional life, between the obligations of his past and the enticing future that is opening up before him. All this means something for the audience because we believe Schoenaerts' performance and because we become convinced of the value and specialness of Bibi and Gigi's connection -- of two courageous, hardboiled people meeting their soulmate.

So how, with all this going for it, does ``Racer and the Jailbird'' figure out a way to make itself boring? Aha, you must never underestimate the ingenuity of our filmmaking friends across the Atlantic. First, the screenwriters separate the two lovers -- that plot turn is unfortunately hinted at in the dumb American title -- and then the movie goes in a couple of directions that are, frankly, ridiculous. Not just ridiculous, but dull and dispiriting.

Thus, two good characters and two good performances go into the old poubelle -- or, as we say in English, the garbage bin.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's movie critic.

Racer and the Jailbird

2 stars out of 4 stars

Drama. Starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Matthias Schoenaerts. Directed by Michael R. Roskam. In French and Flemish with English subtitles. (R. 130 minutes.)