The French Kissers

Les Beaux Gosses literally means The Good Looking Kids. In this movie nothing could be further from the truth. Not that it matters though. You will see pimply kids, kids with a mullet, obese kids and nerdy kids. I just thought that was a smart thing to do. It looks more real than any other American teenager movie played by young beautiful adults passing for sixteen year old adolescents. In Les Beaux Gosses you get the typical view of adolescents discovering the other gender. Most of the time frustrated by their excessive testosterone, they try to have their first sexual experience, or try to get it on with their secret crush. Normally it's not the kind of movies I would go for but I have to admit it was funny to watch. Not all the time but it has it's moments.

Teenagers saga, topic visited many time by film makers, for me this one is fresh funny and sincere. I won't draw comparison with others as I feel it stands OK on its own. I left France 40 years ago and my teenage day was quite different on the ethnicity mix and the freedom of sexual expression that exists today. Yet I could associate so well with my own teenagers' experiences. Although the movie does deal a lot with sexual issues; and why not if it's about teenagers growing up. The film also deals with other relevant issues. I'm a little taking aback by the tittle chosen for English language "French Kissers". In my view it reduces the expectation of the potential viewer to something a little more trivial than what this movie is about. I even read a comment that explained why it was so named! My learning and understanding of the expression "french kiss" is somehow fairly specific and I could not relate to it appropriately further than a play on word. I wish I had the skill to translate meaningfully what "Les Beaux Gosses" conveys. I'm not happy with "the beaut kids" or " the great kids" but it's around this idea. And the idea in "beau gosse" is someone who think he or she's ready to put one over you but smoothly with a smile, weather or not it will happen. If I had to put a title in English for it I probably would have called it LOL, yes because this film is not threatening anyone and does touch people in a way they most likely will relate with it on way or the other, but whatever you will laugh out loudly. If you don't I don't envy you!

The French title of this coming-of-age comedy is Les beaux gosses, "The Good-Looking Boys," and that's the first joke: these boys aren't all that good-looking. But first-time director (and comic book artist) Sattouf and his co-writer Marc Syrigas take the warm-hearted stand that adolescence is a goofy time for pretty much everybody. Hervé (Vincent Lacoste) is tall and scrawny and his Arab sidekick Camel (Anthony Sonigo) is short and has ridiculous long-in-back Seventies hair that signals his rock-star aspirations. The hair styles are iffy, the physiques are far from ideal, the clothes are mismatched, and they have acne. And the pimples aren't just painted on. But it doesn't matter. Hervé and Camel do okay, and the actors who play them are quite appealing.

Hervé goes up to Aurore (Alice Trémolière), one of the prettiest girls in his school, and asks her for a date, and she laughs. Aurore usually has a little entourage of blond, well-groomed boys around her. Before long however she sneaks off with Hervé and they kiss. Hervé may not be a relationship Aurore wants to acknowledge, but he's fine to practice on. And they go further.

American viewers may take Les beaux gosses for a knock-off of a Hollywood youth pic, and it has nothing radically new to offer in its plot line of a kid who scores and then gets his heart broken. The American market is saturated with this kind of stuff. But for francophone viewers, there are nuances in the story-line and the dialogue that get lost in translation. Imagine Heathers done into French. Like Heathers, French Kissers adopts and teases teenage slang. Hervé absorbs French rap lingo, which pops out with hilarious inappropriateness. He thinks rap is good seduction music, and at one point, trying to be casual, he addresses his school's black program supervisor as "nigga." In fact the humor is not so much in what the boys are doing as in the way they talk about it.

Overall Les beaux gosses is more a mockery than a knockoff of Hollywood testosterone, and feels somewhat remote from the excesses of Judd Apatow-sponsored features, though it has something in common with "Freaks and Geeks" -- but with more, much more x-rated stuff. The antics of Hervé, Camel, and their pals are blithely vulgar. There is so much gross-out and crude stuff here it ceases to gross out or seem crude. The specifics of masturbation (and the overuse of socks) and other aspects of teeanage sex are never avoided, and the American Pie/Superbad-style dirty talking and acting is as vivid as it is fresh.

Les beaux gosses also goes into lots of detail about who people are and what they do; the movie's great virtue is its specificity, despite its focus on generic (and amorphous) "ado" problems. A gay lit teacher isn't just suspected of being gay; he's in a magazine as a gay role model and a student asks him to autograph a copy. Emmanuelle Devos has an unusual turn as a haughty school administrator. Hervé's very French single mom (played by director Noemie Lvovsky) takes a humorous interest in his jack-off activities, and also follows him to his girlfriend's party. She's a millstone, but always a benign one.

There is, of course, at least one threateningly perfect boy, Loïc (Baptiste Huet), but he turns out to be far from perfect when a weird accident happens at a gym class whose tumbling sessions also give Hervé a bloody nose. Hervé, Aurore, Camel, and friends Benjamin (Robin Nizan-Duverger) and various others are messy, confused, hormone-crazed, and even sexually vague. Hervé's relationship with his mother is borderline incestuous and with Camel, as they act out and try out, has its homoerotic phases.

It's this cornucopia of absurd over-the-top-ness and richness of detail that explains Les beaux gosses' successful inclusion in Director's Fortnight at Cannes and its rave views after its summer 2009 French release. It was shown as part of the FSLC/uniFrance-sponsored Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at the Walter Reade Theater and the IFC Center in New York in March 2010.

This comedy is easily comparable to the recent American teenage sex-romps, especially the American Pie series, however, at the same time it is a totally different movie. American Pie, as funny as it was, was not witty or intelligent. The French Kissers, directed by first-timer Riad Sattouf, is very funny, but also an accurate representation of what teenage boys experience in high school. Although not all just think of sex, all are curious. This movie follows Herve (Vincent Lacoste) and his best mate Camel (Anthony Sonigo) as they deal with bullies, homework, family, hormones and the girls they so long desire. There is no solid plot, rather, it is a disjointed series of events that happen during a year that summarise a hectic time for teenagers. Relationships are lost and started, tests and asssignments are forgotten about till the last minute, parents pry into their child's sex life, and friends hang out and talk about their latest fling or sexcapades.

What I find makes this movie so good is the performances of the actors, who instill such life into their characters. Lacoste is incredibly funny as the nerdy guy with low self-esteem, but whose hormones are constantly raging. Sonigo is just as funny as the heavy metal loving, mullet wearing best friend who longs for the most beautiful girl in the school. Alice Trémolière and Julie Scheibling are fantastic as Aurore and Laura, the two girls who Herve and Camel lust after with varying degrees of luck. One last mention should go to Noémie Lvovsky as Herve's mother, who never stops prying and loving her son. Honestly, her character was so believable not just because Lvovsky was so good, but I can relate as my mother was a lot like her. Which brings me the screenplay, which is great as it brings a sense of realism to all the proceedings. Nothing is too far-fetched in this movie, which brings it above most American comedies of this nature.

The soundtrack is excellent, and of course, Sattouf's direction is excellent. Yes, this is a very crude movie, with the majority of it being about sex and the various other activities a couple may get up to. Not everyone will enjoy it, the constant talk of masturbation, sex, french kissing (hence the title), and porn will put off people who do not feel comfortable with those subjects. But at the film's heart is a touching story of slowly discovering one's self, and thankfully Sattouf does not resort to sappiness and sentimentality with this theme. Unlike the many American comedies which end neatly with everything returning to normal, this ends in a way which mirrors how high school can really be (but I'm not going to spoil that here).

4/5

(2009) The French Kissers/ Les beaux gosses (In French with English subtitles) DRAMA/ COMEDY

Co-written and directed by Riad Sattouf that center on teenager. Hervé (Vincent Lacoste) and his best friend, Camel (Anthony Sonigo) both of them hoping they too are able to"french kiss" with some of their female peers as well. And as soon as one of them realizes Hervé wanting to do this. That she was only doing it to lead him on. And then down the line, one of them does want a serious relationship with him, her name is Aurore (Alice Trémolières) to which they start out as friends and she invites her and her single mother to a party.

Although, the subject matter is reminiscent to "American Pie" movies somewhat because their are some humiliating situations, I did not find many of the scenes sometimes pointless and unfunny. The ending was somewhat satisfying but was not enough to save the entire movie that left me with some unanswered questions that was never addressed.