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Tout est parfait (Everything Is Fine) (Director: Yves Christian Fournier): I’d read some strong reviews of this film a few months back and was looking forward to checking it out. The premise is intriguing: Josh (Maxime Dumontier) is a typical teenager living in a suburb in Québec. He has a group of friends with whom he skateboards and parties. Then one day he finds the body of his friend Thomas, who’s hanged himself in his room. The recent suicide of his friend Sasha still fresh in his mind, he’s sent reeling when he realizes that Alex and Simon, the others in his group of pals, have also killed themselves. He’s been left out of their pact, and he’s suddenly very alone.
His only connections to the friends he’s lost are Henri, Thomas’s layabout father, and Mia, the ex-girlfriend of Sasha. In the already insular world of teenage boys, he cuts himself even further off from his terrified parents, and stonewalls the counselor he’s required to see at school. Only with Mia does he seem to forget the inexplicable tragedy, indulging in the crush he’d harboured for a long time, though not without guilt. With Henri, he tries to bond over golf, a sport he doesn’t really like, but one with which Henri had always tried to interest Thomas, without success. Other than that, we don’t really get to know Josh at all, and even less about his friends, even though there are some flashbacks as he revisits old haunts.
The pace of the film is incredibly slow, and there is very little dialogue to help flesh out the characters. We see glimpses of Josh with each of his friends, but there is very little sense of what made them such a tight-knit group. The mystery of why Josh is still here is therefore not of as much interest as it should be, and when it is “solved” at the end of the film, it comes both too suddenly and too late. Even so, the senselessness of the suicides is never disturbed by any kind of explanation. The reasons the boys took their lives are in the end as unknowable as the boys themselves, which, combined with the glacial pacing of the film, made it a bit of a frustrating experience for me. The ending redeems the film a little, along with some fine cinematography and a great soundtrack.
Note: This DVD from Alliance Atlantis is primarily a French release. It does have English subtitles, though every sound effect and action seems to be subtitled as well, which made for some snickering each time the counselor was reduced to <sighing>. Additionally, the special features, including a commentary from the director and writer, are available in French only.
(7/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
canada,
quebec,
suicide
Entre les murs (The Class) (Director: Laurent Cantet): I’d been waiting to see this ever since it took the Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this year. It was supposed to play at TIFF and then the New York Film Festival scooped it, so as far as I’m aware, this was the Canadian premiere of this film, and there was plenty of pent-up demand, with lines snaking down the street outside the Isabel Bader Theatre. It didn’t hurt that the tickets were free, since the film opened the 4th annual Eh! U European Film Festival. This festival offers two weeks of free screenings, so be sure to check out the rest of the lineup.
The film has an interesting backstory. Entre les murs (literally “between the walls”) was originally the title of an “autobiographical novel” by Francois Begaudeau, a teacher of French in one of Paris’ tough “banlieues”. Director Cantet recruited Begaudeau to play himself in a dramatization of the book, using real junior high students to recreate the multi-racial environment of the classroom. The students collaborated with Cantet and Begaudeau and workshopped the film in rehearsals for months before shooting began. Although the film has the look and feel of a documentary, nothing was entirely spontaneous. It’s a remarkable achievement, expressing all the power of documentary while maintaining some dramatic and cinematographic conventions.
One thing that keeps the tension high is the fact that we never leave the school itself. The film covers an entire school year, and we stay mostly with M. Marin (Begaudeau) as he confers with fellow teachers, meets with parents and of course, attempts to teach in the maelstrom of his classroom. His charges range from ages 13-15 and are from all sorts of cultural backgrounds (Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, China and the Caribbean are all represented). As a teacher of French, he’s teaching more than just language, but also what it means to be French. His students push back in every way imaginable. Not only are they generally unruly, but they don’t approve of his teaching methods or his insistence on teaching them things like the imperfect subjunctive, which they feel is from “the Middle Ages.” Although he presents himself as one of the more “progressive” teachers, his exasperation grows over time until he lashes out verbally at two students, which leads to a physical confrontation with another. Cantet’s claustrophobic camera helps you understand Marin’s rage. He feels as trapped in the school as his students, except that he’s outnumbered and no one will listen to him.
Classrooms are like petri dishes of society in general, and Entre les murs does a fine job of poking and stirring the dish just enough to provoke some real drama. But best of all were the small moments of grace, when we get to see the little victories, not so much for Marin, but for his students. Two things stuck with me after watching the film. First, that teaching is hard work; and second, that young people are endlessly capable of surprising us.
Official site of the film
Trailer
(9/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
europeanfilmfestival,
france,
school,
students
Water Lilies (Naissance des Pieuvres) (2007, Director: Céline Sciamma): I originally wrote about this film way back in August 2007, anticipating its screening at TIFF. For some reason, I wasn’t able to see it then, so when I saw it in the Cinéfranco lineup, I vowed not to miss it again. And I’m so glad that I didn’t. Céline Sciamma’s directorial debut is a deeply affecting and beautiful film about adolescence: body image, hormones, self-esteem, friendship, loyalty, crushes, sexual confusion, conformity. Though it’s never “about” any of these, it says a lot about them. But it’s not a film of grand gestures. Instead, it’s a very small, very personal film that resonates well beyond its seemingly narrow scope.
It’s summer in an unnamed French suburb. Skinny undeveloped tomboy Marie (Pauline Acquart) goes to the local pool to see her chubby friend Anne (Louise Blachère) perform in a synchronized swimming event. While there, she is mesmerized by the captain of the team, gorgeous blonde Floriane (Adele Haenel). She develops a major crush that becomes an obsession, and abandons Anne to pursue Floriane. Insinuating herself into Floriane’s life by doing favours, she is soon able to watch the team practice and even travel to performances with them. Though it’s obvious that Marie has romantic feelings for Floriane, she is unable to say anything for fear of rejection. Instead, she lets Floriane use her to sneak out of the house to meet boys, causing Marie no end of anguish. Meanwhile, Anne has fallen hard for one of the boys on the water polo team, even though he’s desperately trying to bed Floriane himself. Floriane is just enough of a cypher to cause heartache everywhere she goes, using her flirtatiousness as a defence mechanism to hide her own sexual confusion and fear. Though this leaves Marie confused and heartbroken, she displays a core of toughness that will carry her through. Her friendship with Anne is also deeper than it first appears, and the two outsiders by the end seem much stronger than the supposed “normal” pretty girl.
The setting among a team of synchronized swimmers is a stroke of genius. Back in the fall, I read a few reviews of the film, and I can’t remember where I read it, but I’m stealing the idea nonetheless. A critic stated that synchronized swimming was the perfect metaphor for adolescence. Smiling and beautiful on the surface, but under the water, legs churning like mad to stay afloat. I also liked the idea that, like gymnasts or ballet dancers, there is one particular body type that is required, and anyone else is rejected. The hair and makeup also make the swimmers indistinguishable, since they are all expected to function as part of a greater entity, almost mechanical in its precision. It’s obvious that Marie and Anne don’t fit into this world, but they are magnetically drawn to it anyway. The absence of any adults or any specifics that would place the story into a particular time help to reinforce the insularity of this time in their lives, and therefore its intensity.
As I said in my preview, the film reminded me a lot of Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (1998), and there is even a physical resemblance between the two female pairings. Just as in that film, the director handles the delicacy of first love with great sensitivity, and focuses on how the tiniest of actions or gestures can have great significance. Sciamma coaxes incredibly brave performances from her three young actors, and the cinematography reinforces how beauty is intensified by vulnerability. Though it’s a hoary old cliché, since this is a first film, there is most definitely a lot of Céline Sciamma’s own experience on the screen. I’m desperately hoping she has a lot more to say.
Trailer
Official Site
Interview with director Céline Sciamma
(9/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
cinefranco,
coming-of-age,
homosexuality
Rocket Science (2007, Director: Jeffrey Blitz): This first fictional feature from the director of Oscar-nominated doc Spellbound sounded promising. Fifteen-year-old Hal Hefner (Reece Daniel Thompson) tries to overcome his painful stutter by joining the high school debate squad, spurred by the presence of the lovely but fast-talking Ginny Ryerson (Anna Kendrick). I’m no stranger to the high school nerd makes good comedy, and consider myself a fan, so it’s a little disappointing to have to give this film a so-so review. The problem for me was that I’ve seen this movie done better elsewhere. In fact, the plot is more than a little similar to Thumbsucker (2005), Mike Mills’ feature debut about a teenager who tries to overcome another “handicap” (sucking his thumb) by, among other things, joining the high school debate squad. There’s even a physical resemblance between that film’s star, Lou Taylor Pucci, and the similarly treble-monikered Reece Daniel Thompson. But Thumbsucker was based on a novel by Walter Kirn, and felt more ambitious, not to mention being funnier.
It’s not that Rocket Science isn’t likeable. There is some genuine humour and it’s hard not to root for Hal. But the stuttering isn’t just Hal’s problem. The narrative itself seems to proceed in fits and starts, and by the end, nothing has really happened. Hal has supposedly “found his voice” but he really hasn’t. We’re not really sure whether the debating thing is going to continue, and we’ve never really seen him do his stuff in front of a crowd. The only hint that he’s actually put any work into the research (and his attempts to woo Ginny) are a series of pretty standard montages. I wanted to know what they were talking about. To make things worse, there’s a voiceover that borders on unbearable. It’s not clear whether this is the adult Hal reflecting on his youth, or some all-wise overseer who knows it’s all going to work out. Either way, it was trite and annoying. And while Hal emerges as the most complete character, no one else in the film is fleshed out in any way, with his parents being the most glaring absence. Unfortunately, many of the other characters in the film are nothing more than quirky stereotypes.
Rocket Science is a film that is both familiar and unpredictable, and while this tension could have been a strength, it ended up frustrating me instead. If I recall correctly, the story is a little bit autobiographical, since director Jeffrey Blitz himself suffers from a stutter. I wish that he had trusted more in his own experience and maybe given us a film that didn’t try to play for laughs so much. If he had stripped away a few of the more gimmicky touches and given us a more personal film, I think I would have enjoyed it more.
Buy Rocket Science from Amazon.ca
Buy Rocket Science from Amazon.com
(6/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007, Director: Seth Gordon): I missed this at SXSW last year but have been hearing great things about it ever since. Despite the unwieldy title (why not just “The King of Kong”?), Gordon’s film is a crowd-pleasing tale of good and evil in the geeky world of retro videogames. It reminded me quite a bit of Darkon (review) (a film about live-action role playing gamers), but without some of the self-deprecation. These guys take their hobby extremely seriously. But as in Darkon, the set up involves two very different personalities: for lack of better terms, the bully and the underdog.
Billy Mitchell is the guy who set the Donkey Kong record back in the 1980s, while a teenager, and he’s grown up milking that “fame” for all it’s worth, building up a hot-sauce “empire” and opening a restaurant. He has the swagger of a motivational speaker and isn’t remotely aware of how comical his persona comes across to anyone not in his circle of gamer fanboys. Like the jock in high school, he’s built his whole life around something he accomplished as a teenager. Many people tried and failed to beat Billy’s high score. And then along came Steve Wiebe. Blank to Billy’s brash, Wiebe has the stolid demeanour and look of Al Gore or Troy Aikman, without their achievements. We hear about all the talent he showed as a young man, and then how he’s repeatedly failed to live up to his potential. His pursuit of the Donkey Kong record becomes a sort of Holy Grail for him and his family. He feels that if he can just be the best at something, anything, then he’ll have the confidence to take on the world. He’s a decent guy, a little shy, and reluctant to force a confrontation. But when his record-breaking game is disallowed by Twin Galaxies, a group of ostensibly impartial “referees” with a strong connection to Mitchell, he resolves to claim the record at any cost.
He travels to a game competition on the east coast so he can attempt to break the record “live” (he’d mailed his previous attempt on videotape, a common practice among videogamers) and is eager for a face to face challenge with Mitchell. But like Achilles sulking in his tent (and with the same vulnerable heel), Mitchell refuses to engage Wiebe. Instead, he sends his own videotape, and the gathered group of gamers actually sit and watch that rather than witness Wiebe’s live attempt.
I won’t spoil the story except to say that even after the film’s end, the battle is continuing. The King of Kong is an entertaining examination of a subculture many of us may remember, even if its continued existence is based on nostalgia and arrested development, as well as of two men’s struggles with what it means to be a “winner”. I just wish some of the people I found myself laughing at had the ability to share the joke.
Official web site
Buy The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters from Amazon.ca
Buy The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters from Amazon.com
(8/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
manhood,
success
