Élève libre

Although I can't say I liked this movie, I'm giving it a fairly high rating (six stars) because what it does it does very effectively. I had to keep reminding myself that the creeps in this movie are not real people, which means the ones who made it did a good job.

Unlike some other reviewers, the sexual element didn't affect me much either way. I neither approve nor disapprove of unrelated adults coaching an effectively orphaned teenage boy in the arts and sciences of sex, any form of sex he's interested in experiencing. If he's old enough to do it, and if he's interested, then it's okay. If God hadn't wanted adolescents to be sexually active he could easily have designed them to mature sexually at a later age, but he didn't.

But what does bother me a great deal in this movie is the extraordinarily selfish way the adults treat the adolescents. They are cruel, shallow, snide, petty and totally self-absorbed creeps, and they push their creepiness aggressively onto the emotionally vulnerable adolescents. That emotional abuse is what I find repellent. The fact that Jonas and Delphine are children (and they ARE children emotionally, even though they are not children physically) is almost incidental.

Pierre, Nathalie and Didier are bullies, and if their victims had been people of any age, even people their own age who were less aggressively arrogant than they are - and even if the focus had been on something besides sex: on money or looks or physical fitness or social class or something else - their behavior would have been just as despicable as it was in this movie. They are bullies, and bullies are always despicable.

But the creepiness is so pervasive and so effectively portrayed that the director and writers MUST have done it intentionally. We must be SUPPOSED to despise these people, and we do. So this movie is in the odd class of well made movies that are intentionally unpleasant to watch because they're about despicable characters. Dennis Hopper was in many movies like that.

This movie depicts a sexual abuse of a male child by his "friends" who help him with his tennis training and school exams.

The child has three elder "friends", one of them is a female. His mother and father are far away and he is alone with "them".

There are 5 abuses depicted in the movie which take place when the child is in the "protection" of those elders.

At first, the child is exposed to a sexual discussion in which the "elders" try to indoctrinate him about "infidelity" and they try to convince him to have sex with one of them.

In the second, an elder, finally forces and convinces him to have sex with her while the child is drunk. The child's eyes are tied. Other two people watch him at that abuse.

The third is a homosexual child abuse. While the second abuse is continuing, one of the male elders "take turn" and abuse him. At that moment, the child doesn't know a male is giving blow-job to him. He thinks a woman is doing it.

The fourth is another homosexual child abuse. The second elder, who helps with exams, pushes to, convinces, and gives the boy a blow-job while the boy is trying to study to his exams.

The fifth is again another homosexual child abuse. Like the previous, same elder "gay" person first gives him a blow-job then he penetrates the boy making it an "anal intercourse with a child".

The elders use/abuse "Position of trust" to convince and push him to have sex with each of them.

When the child accuses them for abusing him, the last abuser accuses him back with being an "opportunist". The movie takes side with the elders and it is depicted as if it is "normal" for elders to have sex with a child.

The last guy says "I never did anything that you refused" or something like "I never forced you to do anything." And the child is showed as walking back into house as a justification of all this sexual abuse.

I think producers, writers, and directors of this movie think that it is normal for an elder to have sex with a child if he or she doesn't "refuse." They should have known that a child isn't equipped with mental competency to cope with child abusers. You can't justify having sex with a child by saying "he/she didn't say no!" This is a crime against humanity.

I condemn who contributed to this movie.

It is rather difficult to separate the presentation from the message, especially when the content of this film is undeniably disturbing (and exceedingly complex), no matter how liberal and open-minded some reviewers may wish to portray themselves. The story, the acting, the directing and the final product are all exceedingly well done, regardless of how one is angered and disturbed by what happens to Jonas, the central character in the film. In fact, the resulting emotional response to it all is testament to how well it was done.

Towards the end of the movie Jonas, the young man who is the central focus of the story, angrily declares to his "mentor" that he has been abused by him. The stark reality of this, while hardly revelatory to the viewer, appears to come as a shock to both the abused and the abuser. In fact, most of the adults in the film have abused him, either actively or through neglect or incompetence or indifference. While the sexual aspect of it is the most glaring and disturbing, it is not the only way in which adults have failed him. At his age, he might be thought of as being on the border between child and young adult, but he is clearly child-like in his emotional development and vulnerabilities.

The title, élève libre, has been translated to "Private Lessons." A more accurate meaning of the original title would be, in American English at least, an "auditing student" or an "unregistered student," someone studying outside of the normal student-in-school setting. Because Jonas believes, or has been led to believe, that he has the potential to become a professional tennis player, he has neglected his school work. Since he is already several years older than the other students in his class, his school refuses to allow him to repeat his studies again. They recommend that he enter a vocational school, which Jonas regards as a place for losers. Coincident with this personal trauma, his mediocre performance in tennis means he must face the fact that he will never become a tennis pro.

His core family offers no support for him in his hope to once again prepare for his exams. Enter Didier, Nathalie and Pierre, friends of his mother. Initially they appear to offer Jonas support, both practical and emotional, in his quest to prepare for re-sitting his exams. They, in particular Pierre, take on the role that might better have been played by his family.

At the same time that Jonas is dealing with problems with family, school and tennis, he is trying to understand the mysteries of sex and romance. He has a girlfriend, Delphine. They are both virgins and they begin to explore their sexuality together to their mutual satisfaction, but because of all the other "failures" in his life, Jonas wonders whether he is failing in this too.

At first it seems the trio of adults in his life are also going to provide him with the benefit of their experience and wisdom in matters sexual, but what begins as dinner table conversations offering reassurance and some helpful advice, turns into an increasingly obsessive interest by them in Jonas and his sexual performance. Following their advice and sharing with them the intimacy of his relationship with Delphine eventually, understandably offends Delphine and ruins their relationship. The adults then become sexually involved with Jonas in a way that even the most open-minded person cannot deny is totally exploitative and abusive.

I've read some reviews where the writer feels that the story is dragged out excessively by the lengthy conversations between the characters, especially the dinner table discussion between Jonas and the three adults, but these were essential to the development of those characters and the increasingly obsessive, disturbing interest they had in Jonas as someone to exploit for their own pleasure.

This film will undoubtedly disturb or anger or titillate or otherwise provoke an emotional response from viewers. It is certainly not a feel-good experience with a happy ending (although there is a somewhat lame final scene that might be considered a happy ending). That the hetero and homosexual target of the abuse is a beautiful young man rather than a girl will probably be all the more offensive to some. Objectively it can only be considered an excellent production that deals with an unpleasant topic.

It is said (and I have noted to be true) that people see in other people, in works of Art etc. or anything subjective, what THEY actually are. They project their own being, or shortcomings or fears or hidden secrets. That the author of the review below attack this sensitive film is such a disproportionately virulent (and plainly erroneous) way has said much more about him as a person than he probably intended to express. And to call a 17 year-old a 'child' (and who is in his full legal right to consent to any relationship he wishes to pursue, protected by the law itself) is so absurd as to suggest the author had a North American education. To see rape, to see perverted seduction in what is most obviously all but that, would be an alarm calm for anyone reading his review on this subtle film. What is sure is that with such a serious imbalance within him to feel the need to explode in this way, I would make sure no one below 18 walk near him. We have many recent examples of those who shouted far above the rest, and ended up being caught with their pants down, and I don't mean figuratively. His review reads like an open book of serious personal issues, as yet unresolved, and if his review serves any purpose it would be to help him seek assistance. More to do with the film now; it is of course slow and bleak like many European films, but like many European films dare to recount real life, real subtleties, real complexities of relationships that much cinema avoids - and that many like the author mentioned above would like to push so deep into (their subconscious) perversion as to ...create a perversion in itself, quite aside from the what the filmmaker made. It somehow makes them feel they have crushed their demon for a while - little to do with a review.