35/13
After many years of separation, the unhappy lovers find that every path they choose brings them together again
Synopsis
A rebellious local teenager, Klotter falls in love with his classmate Jackie, but gang violence forces him down a dark and destructive path. Malik Fricka, who plays 17-year-old Clotter in this film, was the world champion in breakdancing when he was 10 years old. One of the characters wears a Rolex Daytona Ceramic from the 1990s, but the timepiece was only released in 2016.
The first part, with children, is quite good
Mes Mains Music by Gilbert Beco Lyrics by Pierre Delanoet. The film should have ended there for the sake of the audience. And Gilles Lelouch would have directed one of the best French teen novels of the decade.
The rest of the film, the second act, is terrible
Actors Francois Siville and Adele Exarchopoulos lack chemistry together, their performance in this film is fresh and uncompromising. I suspect that both actors should start rethinking their careers in French cinema, as soon as the two newcomers Mallory Vanek and Malik Fricka overshadow them and steal the show in this confusingly mediocre film. At first it seems that the film strikes as a modern take on “The Count of Monte Cristo”..
Stylized and tasteless male look
I mean the old story about a young guy who was wronged, who returns to take revenge and find his beloved. However, he comes off with an exaggerated and caricatured toxic masculinity. And in the middle and end of the second act, the plot ultimately loses credibility.
What we have already seen
The problem, besides the burden of everything, is the strange determination that the film shows, claiming originality in every frame it offers, without ever achieving it. Every time when it comes to making a decision, he always chooses the most formal, the most obvious. And here, I repeat, three hours of a film as close as possible to a French blockbuster with good marketing and PR behind it – that’s what the French audience will see this year.
