La vie ne me fait pas peur
France,
1999, 111 min
Shown in 2000
CREDITS
- dir
-
Noémie Lvovsky
- scr
-
Noémie Lvovsky, Florence Seyvos
- cam
-
Agnès Godard, Bertrand Chatry
- editor
-
Michel Klochendler
- cast
-
Magali Woch, Ingrid Molinier, Julie-Marie Parmentier, Camille Rousselet, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Jean-Luc Bideau
- source
-
Le Studio Canal +, 17, rue Dumont d’ Urville, 75116 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1- 47-20-29-67
OTHER
There’s been a lot of media coverage about how traumatic adolescence is for boys; now, we have an unflinching look at how tough it can be for girls. However angst-ridden the atmosphere in this filmic paean to teenage girls, the tone is often comical, never judgmental and always spirited. In a schizy sequence of events, four adolescent girls live through one humiliating and painful misadventure after another, finding comfort and a sense of belonging in each other. Made over several years, it’s amazing to see the young actresses go through major changes—in body and in manner—as they age from about 15 to 17. Set in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Lvovsky incorporates the period’s nihilistic intensity and excess into the story’s fabric. When two of the girls start embracing punk, it’s not so much an act of rebellion as an outward expression of their inner selves—angry, messed-up freaks in an absurd world. Lvovsky taps into the hormone-overdosed adolescent mind so well that you wonder if she let her principal characters make the film: It’s impetuous, changeable, scatterbrained, and its weirdness is exhilarating. Lvovsky’s bold aesthetic and trippy sense of humor solidify her reputation as a technically daring and vigorously imaginative filmmaker—much like the young Jane Campion, only edgier.
—Beverly Berning
FACTOID #173
Though he starred in an Opening Night film (1967’s How I Won the War), lent his image and songs to 1968’s Festival entry Yellow Submarine and was scheduled to appear at the 1971 Festival with wife Yoko for an evening of their short films, John Lennon never attended the SFIFF.
