Les fleurs de l'âge

On one day in the summer a handful of children will all make one small movement from childhood towards adulthood, all in their own ways.

When this film was featured on a short film webpage I frequent, I must admit that the French title and the longer running time made me decide to watch other shorts most times when I came to the site with time to spare; not sure why this is but it did sound like perhaps would be another dour coming-of-age tale, and the French title made me assume that there would be a nice slice of angst in there too. Luckily I am wrong so often that I have become quite good at getting past what I expect and looking to the film for what it is doing, and in this case, while it is a coming-of-age story, it is Canadian and is actually rather sweet and universal in what it does. The narrative focuses on 4 children who are connected but each having a different day: one is at her grandmothers waiting for her mother to collect her; another is planning to smoke a joint he found in his brother's room; another is (unsuccessfully) selling ice-cream out of her house; and another is stuck in detention with a not unattractive teacher. For each of them their stories are slight and delivered with a rather light, bemused air (which I will come to later).

The stories are not earth-shattering but they are engaging and they all go to a common thematic point, which makes for a satisfying ending as it delivers much more than the stories appear to do; it does this by virtue of them not being exaggerated but rather coming back to universal experiences or moments which many people will recognize elements of life in. These small moments are played out well for their significance to the individual character experiencing them; there is no need to present them in a big way for the viewer, because they are clear as to their significance. Adding to this, the child actors are all very good indeed – some of them have better material than others, but they are all convincingly natural and make that thematic link work well.

The overall presentation of the short is a bit problematic for me – although mostly it works. My issue in particular is that it is just a bit too much deliberate in its indie sensibility – the choice of music, the way that names and titles are presented in chalk within the world of the film, the rather introspective tone it has, all of these things work, but very much do push it to be a "type" of film, and perhaps I have endured too many Juno-inspired twee efforts in my time, but I do tend to get my back up when it feels like something is working its way through a tick list of "quirky yet charming" things to include. That is harsh though because, although the film does get close to that in what it does, the quality in the construct and the delivery means that it doesn't ever just become the soundtrack or the cute ideas etc., but I guess it does have the potential to annoy those who really don't like that style of film.

That said, the film as a whole works really well because it does have a slightly delivered charm to it, with a core of good material which is well delivered to be accessible and meaningful to the viewer; all of this is greatly helped by all of the children being very natural and engaging in front of the camera, without a hint of being precocious in any of them.