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 #130
Spike Lee has attended the San Francisco International several times. He came, film reels in hand, for the world premiere of She’s Gotta Have It in 1986. He returned in 1994 with Crooklyn, which starred Oakland’s own Delroy Lindo. And in 2007 he received the Festival’s Film Society Directing Award.
