Close to Leo

This very strong drama from Picture This! and the director Christophe Honoré is very well done and a must see. The 12-year-old boy Marcel is living a normal life with his family in a coastal village in France, but one day he discovers that the family is keeping a secret from him only because they think he´s too young to know. After dinner one night he overhears a conversation where it is revealed that his 21-year-old brother Leo has got HIV and has already developed some AIDS-related symptoms. Leo is not dealing very well with the situation and refuses to start medication, and is certain that he will die very soon. For Marcel life is turned upside down when trying to understand why his loving brother is sick, and most of all he´s disappointed of his family for not telling him the truth. The photo is a bit shaky in the beginning of the film, but soon it gets more than good. The cast is brilliant, not least the young Yaniss Lespert, playing Marcel. Leo is also played very nicely by Pierre Mignard.

       

    

      

Life is a long quiet river

IMDb-link . The French film ”La vie est un long fleuve tranquille” is a 1988-made story about growing up in different socioeconomic conditions and how that affects you´re view of the world. This is a great coming of age movie about a 12-year-old boy who is switched with another baby at birth, thus landing in a poor but loving family, with the other child, a girl, landing in a wealthy but emotionally more strict house. 12 years later the mistake is being revelead and the boy has to move in with his new family. Being used to steal for money he´s amazed of the valuable silver in his new house, but he also has to learn some new manners, including such simple things as how to behave at the dinner table in this more conservative environment. It´s not easy to adjust and his heart seems to stay put with his original though not biological family. Now you should not expect too much drama in this film, since the genre I would say is more comedy. The cinematography or photo in this film is about average, not bad but it could have been better. But the cast is excellent, both the boy playing the main character, and all the others. The story is interesting and the director has done a great job with making a nice and genuin film of it. I think there are at least two important issues in this film, one is how much your personality and values are effected by your family and other surroundings when you are growing up. The other issue is about how much or perhaps how little it means to have biological parents. To summarize, since this is a French coming of age movie, you´ll not get disappointed of the story. It´s nicely done, and I would give it 4 stars out of 5. Other good French coming of age movies are ”My son” , ”La revolte des enfants” and ”Farewell children”.

       

My life in pink (Ma vie en rose)- a short review

IMDb. This well known French film was shown on Swedish television last night and I thought I should make a short review of it in my blog. The film is about a young schoolboy named Ludovic, who cross-dresses and talks about being a girl and is looking forward to become a woman when he grows up so he can marry the neighbour´s son. As you see, the film is dealing with quite a controversial subject, not so much because of the trans gender theme, but because of its presentation through the eyes of a very young boy. It raises many questions, and the audience will have these questions dealt with through the minds of the boy´s parents. One of these obvious questions is from where the boy gets these kind of ”ideas” to cross-dress and why he likes to be a girl. Is it a matter of external influence, or is it coming from within the boy himself, and does that mean that there is something ”wrong” with him? And should the parents try to ”correct” him and make him act more like a boy, and prevent him from playing with dolls? And does ”playing with dolls” make you a girl? What do you think? This is another good French movie, that I would recommend if you haven´t seen it.

IMDb. Another film on the same subject is the Phillipine movie ”The blossoming of Maximo Oliveros”.

Le fils du requin (Son of the shark)

Two brothers, about 10 and 12 (I´m not completely sure), living outside the society as they have run away from home after their mother left them. Still back home is their abusive father who doesn´t seem to care much about them, and a smaller brother. The film is dark. And then I mean not only the story, but also the absence of colors. It must have been shot in the winter or late autumn somewhere in France at the greyest possible weather conditions. It´s rainy and cold and greyish  throughout the film, and it reflects on the screenshots. The two brothers are real vandals and noone seems to be able to control them or offer something they would appreciate. They go in and out of juvenile detention centers or foster families. Near the end of the film you´ll get some more profound feeling of sympathy for them, even if you can see the sadness in their eyes long before. They´re sad and angry at the same time, and some reviewers of this film have in my opinion not been able to see the connection between those emotions.  This is a sociorealistic drama, and highly recommendable for those of you who like these kind of films. Other films about troubled boys are for example ”The boy who cried bitch” and ”L´enfance nue” .

                 

La Traversée du phare / Les Inséparables

Un château en Espagne (2008)

Cartouches gauloises (Summer of ´62)

A rather violent movie (for being a coming-of-age movie with preteen children) about the last days of the French colonial era in Algeria. The story is told through the eyes of a group of boys whose friendship now is deeply affected by all the military and political changes that take place in their neighbourhood. The film focuses on their lives and the young actors are very good and that makes this a rather good coming-of-age-movie. The perhaps somewhat controversial theme here is the amount of violence that were used by French soldiers, but otherwise this is a plain mainstream movie without any controversial subjects. Movies with such subjects that I have blogged about before are for example ”For a lost soldier” , ”Maximo Oliveros” , ”This special friendship” , ”Body without soul” , ”The flavor of corn” and ”Wild tigers I have known” . Movies like these aren´t automatically better than family movies like ”The thief lord” , ”Red balloon” , ”Oliver Twist” , ”Flipper” , ”Fatty Finn” and ”December boys” , but they make you think more and aren´t just plain entertainment.

Warning: The trailer contains some violence, not suitable for those under 15.