An attitude long gone
I just saw this in a club screening and while Alexandre seems pretentious, volatile and a bit childish most of the time, I also get to feel that he was born at least thirty years too late. He (and his friends too) are a remnant of a way of life which was old and fading already by '73 and now seeems long gone. *Nobody* is as direct and frank as this anymore, no one would show his own weak spots like this. We've all become a lot more fast-paced, conscious of how we appear, more telegenic and above all smoother. Sure, if Alexandre didn't have Marie or others to live by - does she really pay for his café rounds all of the time or does he have a monthly allowance from his Dad, to keep away from the hometown? - he might drop into the place of a Seine clochard.
But there is a need for outsiders beyond the age of twenty too; I mean genuine outsiders, not just people who dress up, get in the telly for fifteen minutes and pretend to be hard-lined outsiders. Alecxandre acts silly, thinks he's quite irresistible, and he doesn't see he's hurting people, O.K, but he's also a guy who can see right through pretention. I feel, at least sometimes he plumbs the pretences in himself too, though it's not said openly - more to the point, he wouldn't mind, not having downed a glass of whisky at least, telling the corrupt big boss to go scr*w himself. To quote a poet from my native Sweden:
As everybody's busy
all the time, running around the hall,
it's of the utmost importance
that one man journeys away from it all.