A good movie

Since I really loved ‘Portrait de la jeune fille en feu’, I was quite eager to watch another movie directed by Céline Sciamma so I thought I might as well check this one out. Well, even if it might not be one of her most famous movies, it was still not bad at all. By now, I have seen enough movies dealing with ‘la banlieue’ (the French ghettos around Paris) but it was the first one I have seen focusing on the girls living there. Basically, it is a depressive but above all, as displayed in this movie, a really oppressive place to live and probably even more for young girls. Indeed, just like the boys, they have basically no prospects but, on top of that, there is some immediate physical danger at every dark corners. Eventually, it’s the first time this environment felt like such a prison to me. As a result, even if it might seem misguided, it might not be the worst idea in the world to hook up with a group of tough girls. It’s too bad they didn’t display how they managed to get by on a daily basis but I guess it wasn’t the point of this movie. It’s interesting that it was considered as a coming-of-age movie while, in fact, the main character didn’t evolve whatsoever. Of course, in some US movies, she would have become a tough gangster but, in this case, the main character didn’t climb up socially at all and, at the end, she seemed to be just as lost as she was in the beginning but I did appreciate this grim but at least realistic approach. To be honest, it did slightly bother me that Sciamma was a complete outsider from this world (like Mathieu Kassovitz was when he made ‘La haine’, the biggest classic in this genre) and I wonder if the people living in these ghettos felt correctly represented in this movie. Anyway, to conclude, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look. 

7/10