"The Student" is a straightforward romance if there's ever one and a proof that the saying "aim small, miss small" can also apply to the movies.
The film directed by Claude Pinoteau -who had made Sophie Marceau's breakthrough coming-of-age hit "La Boum" ("The Party") 8 years earlier- covers all the required tropes of the hip chick flick but embedded in that so undefinable 80s spirit that aged quite well.
So what do we have? Boy meets girl, girl notices boy, smile-inducing awkwardness during the first exchanges, feelings that don't take too long to get mutual, first date, the night that changes it all, meeting friends and families, then out of sight but not out of mind, jealousy, arguments, misunderstanding, professional mishmash and if there's no standout scene, there's still the ending, and well, that's some last ten minutes that I will remember.
Indeed, you may say "The Student" (referring to Valentine, played by Marceau) might not be a masterpiece of originality, but I challenge you to find another movie that uses an aggregation oral examen as a canvas for a heartfelt love declaration,. Maybe it's because I spent the previous year preparing for two similar career-defining exams, including that one (and failed at both), and so I coud relate to Valentine's struggles to keep her studies on track, to her friend's panic attack and I realized that I was foolish to believe I could succeed in one year what takes year for others.
And that's the trick, I related to the girl and to the boy, Edward, played by Vincent Lindon in his boyish years. I'm not 5% as attractive as he is, but there's something about his composure, his eyes, his smile, that gets him so close to us and so his struggles to reach Valentine, his obsession to get to her, his propensity to swallow his pride, anyway his neediness hit home. The craziest thing is that the stakes are higher for Valentine, she's the one who might sacrifice her professional life for a man she loves. Winning her love is not the cause, the cause is how willing you are to sacrifice a career to keep that love.
Movies like "The Student" seem apt to transcend their banality because they succeeded at handling the two essential things: the casting and the script. With her girlish rosy cheeks, Sophie Marceau is as beautiful as ever without looking like your sensual pin-up and the camera doesn't fall into trap so common in the 80s by over-sexualizing her character, like her previous husband and director Andrzej Zulawski. And on her side there's Edouard a musician preparing a score for a famous film and struggling to find the inspiration, an ordeal that echoes his own problems of communication with Valentine. Making that an obstacle would have been a cliché, but the two are in love and basically the film is about them trying to find the right pace. Both belong to different universes: intellectual upper class and Bohemian lifestyle. But the script never suggest a sort of milieu-driven antagonism, trying to keep a fair balance between the romance novel sappiness and a certain realism.
Setting half the story in the world of show business, Pinoteau emphasize the characters' ordinariness by making them coexist with real life figures like director Elie Chouraki, actress Marie-Christine Barrault and there's even a nod to Vladimir Cosma, the film composer who had an instinct for folksy scores, playful tunes, little schmaltzy ones and what could be typical "slow" hits (romantic songs allowing teenagers to stand close to each other during the famous "boums"). Ultimately the score composed by Edouard is the score of the film and Cosma who signed "La Boum"'s "Dreams are my Reality" strike it again with another 'matchmaker' "You Call it Love".
(even as a 6-year old at that time, I remember going to such parties organized by my cousins and I was looking at teens holding each other tight during these slow moments)
And what's left is the genuine spontaneity of Edouard and the fairy-tale girly quality of Valentine and their desperation to reach other despite conflicting schedules and meeting their friends and families, whatever happen to spice up the relationship isn't original but it leads to a fantastic declaration by Valentine, using her own test subject and talking about a book I happen to have read. The film might have the apparatus of a no-brain romance but I suspect the climax had taken a few sleepless nights to get on the paper. And a nice ending when we don't need to see the outcome but just to realize that sometimes love is that thing that makes us committ silly things.
I don't think the film's conclusion is that love is beyond having a professional dream, it's precisely because Valentine did the exam after all that the film aged well. Any other ending would have been manipulation. Valentine was capable to do crazy things in the name of love, except negating herself. And her dream to be a teacher was part of herself. The title says it all, she's "The student".
