Malle's uncanny capacity to find the comic dimension within conventionally shocking material distinguishes tonight's pair of films.

Second feature start time: 9 pm. The charming Le souffle au coeur follows a pampered bourgeois teenage boy in the mid-1950s. Along with his mother, the boy finds love in an unexpected way. (110 mins.)

The screening is followed by Malle's dazzling adaptation of Raymond Queneau's surrealist classic, Zazie dans le metro, about a boisterously defiant girl—with a hilarious, often off-color wit—and her misadventures all over Paris. (93 mins.)