Diabolo menthe

As a child from the late 70s, this movie was a famous experience for me in the 80s. I remember that we talked a lot about if in my family. Honestly, even as a boy, i connect easily with the younger Anne: quiet, daring, lost, arguing with the parents, on charge with her sibling (like a battery) and meeting the inner desire.

The family life in Paris in the sixties looks like mine, twenty years later in a provincial town: educational system grinding young students, silly teachers, discipline over all, pocket money, letters, nice clothes... So this movie feels amazingly authentic and in addition, it's told with innocence, kindness and modesty.

But, sadly, this world and this Paris are gone now. Now the benchmark is Ozon Jeune & Jolie in which student girl dreams to become prostitute for sex and money! World has changed for worst but luckily we have still movies like Diabolo Menthe to remember how cool it was.

What appears at first to be the French female answer - in director and in main cast - to the 400 Blows (and to an extent too Small Change, which came out the year before this) - ends up having deeper levels if only because a) there are two sisters here, and the structure of this definitely and umabashedly episodic film is split by the younger one in the first half and then more the older in the second (they're only age different by two years but, one thing this filmmaker knows well and wisely, when you're young those two years matter a great deal), and b) it's more politcal and sociolgically a buzz.

If nothing else there are moments the director stops - amid the many, many of lifes little moments - for a side character to have a monologue or reveal something (ie the girl detailing a massacre she witnessed) that keep it humming with drama amid the lightness and comedy. It's a movie with men who seem threatening and welcoming, perversity is around the corner, but innocence is maintaned despite everything.

It's a playful, dark, sad, delightful, startling, and full of wisdom. The girl actresses are natural and convincing, even when they have to cry or act besotten or whathaveyou. The drawback overall is it's all too long. But hey, better to have too much than too little.

A truly brilliant look into a year in the life of two sisters at an all-girl school in France, 1963.

Kurys does an amazing job of spinning a narrative out of a string of separate occurrences as we follow these characters through a significant time in their life.

One can't help but be reminded of their crucial years growing up and amazed out how seamlessly the director was able to put all of these emotions into one film.

Wonderfully shot through the ingenious eye of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, this film is a shining gem that leaves an impression.

The director's Entre Nous is one of my favorite movies. I had never seen Peppermint Soda, which I understood was equally autobiographical, so rented it. It's quite different in style from Entre Nous - covers far less time, and the "events" in the two sisters' lives are all quite "micro".

Yet it's also true that I cannot think of anything that portrays adolescence as it really was (for boys as well as girls) as well as this movie. Kurys has a truly remarkable feel for the extent to which music on the radio was a back-drop, or the way that a long-running dispute with a parent over clothing (in this case, nylons) can punctuate daily life, or the way friendships in school change over time. It's really a brilliant movie - not the most entertaining, but in its way, profound and well worth seeing. You will find yourself liking it more and more and more as the movie develops.

Diane Kurys made her directorial debut with 1977's "Diabolo menthe" ("Peppermint Soda" in English), about a pair of sisters in Paris amid the politically heightened period of 1963-64. This is the first movie of Kurys's that I've seen, so I can't compare to the rest. I also wasn't alive at the time depicted, so I can't judge the authenticity.

What I can say is that the movie establishes a fine depiction of what it's like to come of age, especially in a less-than-welcoming setting (the school comes across more like a prison). I would've liked it more had it depicted the girls getting into the Beatles - wouldn't that have happened in 1963-64? - but aside from that, the movie gives one a feeling of growing up in the era. A well-made coming-of-age movie, just like "The 400 Blows", "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Stand By Me". I hope to see the rest of Diane Kurys's movies.