Director Olivier Assayas has remarked that, with Boarding Gate, he was hoping to make a B movie in English. Far more than an exercise in genre tinkering, Boarding Gate shows Assayas’s unwavering commitment to the feral talents of his lead actress, the incomparable Asia Argento. Playing an ex-prostitute who needs money to open a club in Beijing, Argento’s Sandra approaches her former boyfriend, a corrupt American businessman, for cash. After some kinky sex and spilled blood, Sandra is on the lam, ending up in Hong Kong and trying to save her own life. Like his 2002 film, Demonlover, Boarding Gate unspools as a high-energy international thriller. Yet the extravagances in the plot are subordinate to Assayas’s primary concern: creating a star vehicle for Argento, who gives an absolutely unhinged, fearless performance. As he did with Maggie Cheung in Irma Vep (1996) and Clean (2004) and Connie Nielsen in Demonlover, Assayas lets every action and gesture of Argento—each one beautifully captured by cinematographer Yorick Le Saux—become the center of his film. In exchange for indulging some of Boarding Gate’s more nonsensical twists, we are rewarded with one of the most vibrant films of the last few years.