Terrain Vague on AllMovie

Studio-bound director Marcel Carne's career was already faltering with the onslaught of New Wave cinema and location shooting when he made this standard, somewhat old-fashioned drama about a group of teens in a bad neighborhood. The head of the local gang of petty thieves is a tough young woman who presides over gang meetings in an abandoned factory. When an even tougher criminal just out of reform school moves in on her territory, it looks like the gang is headed for big-time crime. That possibility is undercut by one important detail -- the tomboy and the young thug start to fall for each other.