Una chica fácil

While at least one of the main actresses in this was about a decade older than the character she portrayed, you almost buy it. And she plays it loose and "innocent". Though most would not call her innocent at all. Not in any sexual way that is, because she really puts herself out there.

And while she is doing that, her friend is the introvert and able to express herself the same way. Now if you are judging one or the other, that is I reckon fair. But remember that we are all different and we do experience things different. This is about a summer that helps both those girls grow to become the person they end up to be.

Maybe not highly philosophical, maybe not the best movie, but it is quite the decent one. If you don't mind the occasional nudity and sexual situation depicted here that is of course. Sparsely used but still some may feel "offended"

Naïma (Jiang Rong) is almost 16 years old and lives in Cannes at her mother's house. Her family receives the impromptu visit of her Parisian cousin Sofia (Zahia Dehar), a young woman with a silhouette as divine as artificial. Naïma will spend an unforgettable summer on a luxury yacht along the French Riviera, with Sofia as well as Philippe (Benoît Magimel) and Andres (Nuno Lopes), two forty-year-old men, wealthy and attractive. Thus, she will get to know herself better and leave her adolescence to finally take life in her own hands.

The French title, i.e. « une fille facile » meaning an 'easy' woman, is deliberately provocative and tantalizing quite as the choice of the deliberately inflammatory Zahia Dehar who was a hot news topic, one decade ago, because of a scandal with a part of the French soccer team using the services of this juvenile call girl. This is slightly misleading. In my humble opinion, the focus is also on Naïma and a pivotal period of her life thanks to Sofia and Philippe.

As a postscript, 1) The incident with the collector's sextant is far-fetched and particularly disappointing: a real weakness in the script. 2) I would personally have imagined the end scene punctuated by the song 'My way' popularized in 1969 by Frank Sinatra. Why? Well, she obviously found it, didn't she?

Know how to make good movies. This wasn't a blockbuster but was very entertaining and the acting was great. For some reason even though I understand little, if any, French, I understood perfectly what was happening throughout the movie. Maybe some American directors and actors should take some time off from their superhero films and go to France and learn how to make real movies.

This movie has the visual style of Call Me By Your Name and just as much action. It's a film set in the summer in Cannes and the main characters are two girl cousins who spend their time together. One, a 16 year naive that doesn't yet know what she wants and a 22 year one that has already found a calling in being an escort for rich men. That's it. The acting is good, the situations believable and we learn how actual people react in actual situations. Yet the film makes no effort in exploring the set up in depth. There are no artificial dramas either. Just a girl figuring herself out. And other than a few breast scenes, it's not particularly erotic either.

Overall the movie fails in some ways to achieve the depth it wants to achieve, but the coming-of-age theme still struck a chord with me. These slice-of-life scenes - the partying, the low-key drama, the confusion of it all - could be very familiar to all Gen Y or Z viewers.

The movie is very unapologetic in its nudity, sympathetic to a new kind of female character that no movie I have ever seen has been sympathetic to. That extremely realistic, clumsy yet charming karaoke scene was a breath of fresh air.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a GREAT film by objective standards, but it definitely has a soul, something that not many movies have anymore. Creatively shot and immersive in its simplicity, with a feminist message that is all-inclusive.