Well, the movie got one thing right anyway. Sandrine Bonnaire is the essence of sixteen-year-old nubility and it comes in a delightful frame. Don't worry too much, though. There's very little nudity and no simulated sex. She can act too. Once in a while she grins. But her default expression is one of solemn and distant contempt. It happens to fit the role because she's not supposed to be a happy adolescent, despite her middle-class family.
Sandrine lives at home with her father, her mother, and her possibly gender-confused, plump older brother. Her father, in this context, is the soul of common sense and tranquility. He's played by the director, Maurice Pialat, who had the good taste to give himself the good-guy role. Sandrine's mother, on the other hand, although she tries to live up to her responsibilities, is a whirlwind of hysteria with a waspish temper. She treat Sandrine the way my concierge treated me. She and Sandrine bat each other around -- really HARD, too, so you can hear the loud whacks as the blows land. When Mom isn't beating Sandrine, the brother is.
I want to give the film points for its elegant dinner conversation with guests present. They argue over who's the better artist and fling around names like Ingre and Bonnard. And they're entirely serious except when making up portmanteau words like "Picasshole." Well, that's the French for you. In a fancy restaurant in Paris there was a ruckus at the next table and one of the staff came over and apologized to us, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian.
And how does Sandrine handle all this strife? Not well. She's really just a dependent kid, after all. She balls every boy who shows an interest in her, even if the kid can't speak French and, after intercourse, says, "Thanks a lot." With Sandrine's absent father and her mother the paragon of instability that she is, it's understandable that Sandrine's reaction is less than what Freud called "anaclitic." Sandrine isn't interested in older men, just horny high-school boys. And her musings sound like those of Henri, the existential cat. "It's terrible to love no one," and, "Sometimes it feels as if my heart has dried up."
What eluded me was the point of the movie. Is it that married couples who have been together for twenty years find that they don't have much to say to one another, and so they argue a lot? Is it that teens who are striving for an identity outside of the household run into trouble with their mothers who demand that they obey orders as if they were still toddlers? Is it that, even outside the household, teens have trouble deciding who they are and what they want because they don't have enough experience to decide? Well, knock me down with a banal feather!
I can tell you it wasn't that way when I struggled through high school. Oh, it was tough, sure, but there weren't any girls around who were as accommodating as Sandrine. You couldn't even get close to the plain-looking girls, let alone the devastating beauties. And these young punks take their access to her body for granted? I don't like those boys. Come to think of it, I don't like this movie because it has such lucky goons IN it. These kids are spoiled rotten. They don't have to put the least effort into what I yearned for, the swine. I ask you -- the sensitive and discerning viewer -- is it any wonder that the world is going to hell in a handbasket?
Sandrine lives at home with her father, her mother, and her possibly gender-confused, plump older brother. Her father, in this context, is the soul of common sense and tranquility. He's played by the director, Maurice Pialat, who had the good taste to give himself the good-guy role. Sandrine's mother, on the other hand, although she tries to live up to her responsibilities, is a whirlwind of hysteria with a waspish temper. She treat Sandrine the way my concierge treated me. She and Sandrine bat each other around -- really HARD, too, so you can hear the loud whacks as the blows land. When Mom isn't beating Sandrine, the brother is.
I want to give the film points for its elegant dinner conversation with guests present. They argue over who's the better artist and fling around names like Ingre and Bonnard. And they're entirely serious except when making up portmanteau words like "Picasshole." Well, that's the French for you. In a fancy restaurant in Paris there was a ruckus at the next table and one of the staff came over and apologized to us, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian.
And how does Sandrine handle all this strife? Not well. She's really just a dependent kid, after all. She balls every boy who shows an interest in her, even if the kid can't speak French and, after intercourse, says, "Thanks a lot." With Sandrine's absent father and her mother the paragon of instability that she is, it's understandable that Sandrine's reaction is less than what Freud called "anaclitic." Sandrine isn't interested in older men, just horny high-school boys. And her musings sound like those of Henri, the existential cat. "It's terrible to love no one," and, "Sometimes it feels as if my heart has dried up."
What eluded me was the point of the movie. Is it that married couples who have been together for twenty years find that they don't have much to say to one another, and so they argue a lot? Is it that teens who are striving for an identity outside of the household run into trouble with their mothers who demand that they obey orders as if they were still toddlers? Is it that, even outside the household, teens have trouble deciding who they are and what they want because they don't have enough experience to decide? Well, knock me down with a banal feather!
I can tell you it wasn't that way when I struggled through high school. Oh, it was tough, sure, but there weren't any girls around who were as accommodating as Sandrine. You couldn't even get close to the plain-looking girls, let alone the devastating beauties. And these young punks take their access to her body for granted? I don't like those boys. Come to think of it, I don't like this movie because it has such lucky goons IN it. These kids are spoiled rotten. They don't have to put the least effort into what I yearned for, the swine. I ask you -- the sensitive and discerning viewer -- is it any wonder that the world is going to hell in a handbasket?