THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
It is the eternal story of a teenager like any other, and French cinema will never tire of filming the blossoming of young girls, the long procession of first times, of the carelessness that cracks in contact with reality. . This is the genre that actress Sandrine Kiberlain chose for her first feature film, A young girl who is well, presented at Cannes in 2021, at Critics’ Week.
We inevitably feel autobiographical bursts in the portrait of Irène, 19,
passionate about theatre, who twirls between her rehearsals, coffees with friends and dinner time with her father, grandmother and brother. A certain way of softening and remembering through the body of another – that of Rebecca Marder, resident of the Comédie-Française, whose electrified presence we recently came across in Deception, by Arnaud Desplechin.
treasure hunt
We will very quickly detect a disturbing strangeness, a lameness that grips the “girl’s film”: impossible to date the story, no opening card to guide us, no retro hairstyle, despite the outfits of another time, no poster or any car in the streets to spot us. Kiberlain films in deserted street corners, in tight shots, many indoors – caught in the gaze of a stubborn teenager, reality becomes vague. It could be today like fifty years ago. Until a first retort said in passing: “You have to put the stamp “Jew” on the papers. »
By dint of precautions to avoid sepia reconstruction and historical heaviness, the film ends up creating another artifice, that of a lightness which is more a filmmaker’s posture than an attitude of the heroine.
The treasure hunt is interrupted, we are in Paris, under the Occupation, but the denial continues: Irène goes about her dreams, meets a boy, rehearses to join the Conservatoire d’art dramatique, and thinks only of that, even when she wears a yellow star on her jacket. There is a beautiful idea that presides over A young girl who is well, which consists in holding the course set by its title: Kiberlain remains in the reality as it gives itself to a young 19-year-old Jewess in 1942, evolving in ignorance of what awaits her, not perceiving in the looks sleazy and the restrictions imposed on the Jews the tragic horizon that awaits her – but was such carelessness, at the time, really possible? In this sense, the director says she was inspired by the diaries of Hélène Berr and Anne Frank, meticulously describing the life of a young girl under the Nazi Occupation until the sudden interruption of the daily review.
You have 24.61% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.