Directing Daily Struggles : Claire Denis is attracted to tales of marginal, often working-class people.

In 1989, French filmmaker Claire Denis won international acclaim with her debut film, “Chocolat,” set in the waning days of French colonial Africa and focusing on a tender relationship between a pair of outsiders, the daughter of a white French district officer and the family’s black servant. Through them, Denis revealed the colonial social structure to be as fragile as it was unjust.

Denis went on to become a major writer-director, but none of her subsequent films have received a wide U.S. release until “Nenette and Boni,” which opens Friday at the Nuart. The lack of exposure of Denis’ films in America is a sad comment on the state of the distribution of foreign films.

“Nenette and Boni” tells of a young Marseilles pizza-maker/delivery man named Boni (Gregoire Colin) whose pleasant routine existence is jolted by the unwelcome arrival of his pregnant 15-year-old sister Nenette (Alice Houri). They aren’t prepared for a mutual attraction setting in between them that neither is about to acknowledge, only heightening the volatile nature of their relationship.

“Making pizza is a great job,” said Denis in an interview in a West Hollywood hotel earlier in the year. “All that kneading the dough, everything to do with cooking is wonderful, sensual.”

Denis, a slim, blond woman of 47 with a gaze of extraordinary sensitivity, explained that with this film she wanted the point of view to be that of a very young woman. “Only slowly does Boni understand that something is growing in Nenette’s abdomen.”

Denis suggests that Nenette’s pregnancy triggers dreams in both her and her brother, offering a possibility of communication between them. “It was a difficult film for me. I wanted the film to get under the skin of those people.”

Getting under the skin of her characters, however, is precisely Denis’ forte. We feel we are discovering what Nenette and Boni are like from within, and that is true both for the people of “Chocolat” and her “I Can’t Sleep,” a taut, elegant, acutely observant study of several intersecting lives in contemporary Paris, where a beautiful, aspiring actress (Katerina Golubeva) arrives from Lithuania.

“I Can’t Sleep” became a story of surviving in an often cold, alienating Paris. As Denis’ people go about their daily struggles, we hear news reports in the media of a series of murders of elderly women, and “I Can’t Sleep” emerged as a powerful, unsettling comment on the illusion of security in all its aspects--emotional, financial and physical--in the modern world. It was one of the best films to surface in Los Angeles last year, yet played only two weekend matinees at the Nuart last December; hopefully, it will resurface.

What probably won’t ever surface is the Denis film that led to “Nenette and Boni,” “U.S. Go Home,” which was the last of a series of nine films about young people--Andre Techine’s “Wild Reeds” was the first--commissioned by the French TV channel Arte. In this film, Coline and Houri also play a brother and a sister--with the sister, only 14 or 15, falling in love with a lonely GI played by Vincent Gallo, facing constant scorn, as the time is 1966, with anti-Vietnam War sentiments deepening.

“The music rights--I used songs from the Animals, the Rolling Stones, many others--for an American release would be incredibly expensive,” she said. “Anyway, I was amazed by Alice Houri, and I wanted to make a film with her and Coline immediately. Vincent, who’s such a sweet, nonaggressive man, said, ‘How come you’re developing a script without me?,’ so he’s worked three days in ‘Nenette and Boni’ as a ‘wave’ to him.”

Between “Chocolat” and “U.S. Go Home” Denis made the infectious documentary/concert film “Man No Run,” about the first French tour of a musical group from Cameroon, composed of five wonderful young musicians who make up Les Tetes Brulees (the Burned-Out Heads). She also made a documentary on French New Wave pioneer director Jacques Rivette. Denis had collaborated with Rivette on some scripts and also worked as an assistant director to such diverse notables as Dusan Makavejev, Costa-Gavras, Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch. She also made the feature “No Fear, No Death,” “about two guys holding clandestine cock fights. Big bills get won and lost.”

You have to wonder how Denis, who has a partner “but no kids,” seems so invariably attracted to marginal, often working-class people, especially when she spent her childhood in the privileged status as the daughter of a French civil servant in Cameroon in the waning days of French colonialism. But that proves to be the whole point with her.

“Growing up outside your own country makes you feel that you don’t belong when you return, so you feel free to make friends with whomever you like. My mother’s father was from Brazil, a painter and not a famous one and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.

“I have no relationship to the French bourgeoise. I don’t like connecting with them. Being an outsider makes you very free. And when you start making films, you choose your side. You see that in Godard when he made ‘Breathless.’ ”

Denis worries about the rise of the far right in France with its desire to keep the nation “pure”--”white, clean, healthy and wealthy. But what of all those others who are out of work, without shelter? When your politics are bad, you always pay for it. Algeria is a disaster. We have to live with that because we were part of it.”

Admitting that at times she can feel overcome with pessimism about the future, Denis takes hope in the possibility that the nationalistic, tribalistic tendencies that flare up everywhere are “last stands.” “We have to think that even though stupidity can be very strong and hard to resist that it’s not so solid after all.”