Bang Gang

With even theatrical French films being largely financed by television these days, it's perhaps not surprising so much modern French cinema is devoted to "social problem" films like this. Although this is allegedly based on a true story, I don't know that middle-class teenagers engaging in wild sex orgies is really all that widespread of social problem even in France (although I'm sure a lot of horny male teenagers probably WISH it was a widespread social problem). More likely this was a "man-bites-dog" story that got attention from the French media because it was UNUSUAL, not because it was necessarily typical of what a lot of French teens are up to these days.

Still, if this were an American film, it would undoubtedly be either much more alarmist or much more exploitative (or perhaps both in the case of something like Larry Clark's "Kids"). This film, however, remains fairly non-judgmental and realistic. Its three protagonists--a shy male musician and two girls who get played by the same smooth-talking "player"--are realistic and sympathetic, even if the background given of their problems and their home-life doesn't really account for why they would become juvenile swingers. But I suppose teenagers don't necessarily need any more excuses to be sexually promiscuous than adults do.

It's probably not a coincidence that there are a lot more French films about middle-class teenage or college students who become prostitutes ("Student Services", "Young and Beautiful") or all decide to get pregnant ("17 Filles") or engage in sex orgies like this then there are about teenagers who do their homework, generally listen to their parents, and are focused on getting into a good university. Still, this film is not nearly as exploitative as it COULD be. There is a fair amount of nudity (actually more male than female), but it's not all that shocking since all the actors look at least five years too old to actually BE teenagers. (They're all pretty attractive too in the naturalistic French way). Still, I miss the more old-style French films that are more arty and/or literary and personal and are focused on singular characters as opposed to "real", but frankly also quite boring, people.

Although, Bang Gang forwardly touches on specific true events had by the curiosities, desires and boredom of the modern-teenage life, it well captures the freedom and the euphoric/dejected, consciousness in the quick moving life-span of these events in teen life today. It feels as though instead of experiencing these fast moments (like things often seemed as a teenager), it's like we're on the back-burner of their minds, watching in a cinematic sense and taking in the subtle details. Playfully reckless actions taken, lust, the sudden bursts of excitement, wanting to feel alive, wanting to be wanted and eventually wishing to be left alone VS the common crowd. Feelings that I believe are commonly amplified in teen years. Whether you are now an adult or a teen looking to view this film, afterwards you may think that this movie depicts nothing more than bad decisions and the lewd minds of youth today; or that maybe this display of teen life is but yet another overrated tale of many. But as an adult who appreciates French films and this common preference for the essence of a moment expressed (which most would view as a dull, simplistic happening in a scene), the director did well to display emotion through the characters actions, down to their very gestures, keying into longing; annoyance, lust, love, sadness, joy, coping and the journey onward after a summer's end of fun with little to no responsibility.

This movie made me appreciate my past teen years even more so. Fleeting moments experienced, the friends and strangers met, good and bad, it all plays as a certain structure in our subconscious learning as we grow into our future selves and venture into adulthood, and man does it fly by.

In the movie, Laetitia mention's how everything went by so fast, feeling like a dream. There's this look of heavy thought expressed on her face, perhaps reminiscing..

And then it's on to the next thing.

It's so hard to give an 8 to a movie with an average of 5 and a metascore of 50, but I guess sometimes you have to go with your gut feeling. I'm thinking about 'Bang Gang', the story we would only find in a young adult book that was written in six months time, but after a first view has proven to be a decent study of character and of the consequences of group dynamics. The effects of sex outside relationships are shown, but one may raise the question: Is the idea of this free sex without bonding explicitly rejected? Not really. You simply decide for yourself what moral lesson is to be learned. Because even though everyone ends up with diseases, there is also stress on the fun of experimenting for as long as it lasts. Unlike other movies, in this film the viewer can determine what is right or wrong.

Most of all, it's a movie that shows what many adolescents would like to experience, but are afraid of at the same time. What if you have sex with just 'anyone'? Can you still really show your love to the person you love, who has been faithful to only giving his or her body to an actual soulmate? This movie surely shows what it's like, both in a positive and in a negative way. Watch the movie with a free mind and think of the fantasies you had as a 16 year old. I know that my own shy and slender self would have thought it eye-opening to look into this adventurous world for 90 minutes, without any consequences.

As a teenager, there are many depictions of teenage sexuality that I find have followed their own successful formula for so long that they fail to depict modern adolescent sexuality accurately. Bang Gang is indeed, as it is billed as, a "modern love story". In particular, the impact of social media on the psyches and voyeuristic attitudes of my generation are perfectly encompassed. Within director Eva Husson's spectacle, there are familiar themes: the need to be wanted, to be set apart from the herd, the loneliness that comes with attaining your fantasies and finding that they are not enough (read: the scene in which Alex, high on vice, stumbles completely naked out to the pool-where teenagers are copulating and filming it all on camera for online distribution-and plunges in, attempting to shut everything out). As a teenager, there was always a certain orgiastic essence to house parties, people sneaking off to bathrooms and guest bedrooms to hook up, spin the bottle and escalating dares, so that the possibilities of such an event happening, as it did in real life, do not seem far-fetched. The imagery and cinematography of the movie is spectacular. The control of light and palette is exquisite, so that a normally vulgar tableau-consider Harmony Korine's "Kids", all grit and no softness-is rendered soft and ambient. There are some shots that could come straight out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. And maybe that's what's so beautiful about this movie; youth isn't some dispensable, ephemeral quantity of life, regardless of its course, youth does guide our lives, and teaches us that to be happy, you have to risk being hurt.

Only the French can make a movie entirely about sex this aimless, pointless, thoughtless, pretentious, and boring. The metaphors were crude, obvious, and unimaginative. The "conclusions" were like something one finds on a milk carton, a cigarette pack, or a fifteen-second commercial message from the local public health office. The writer couldn't be bothered to do elementary research so used creative giants like Van Gogh and Nietzsche as throwaway figures who "died of syphilis," showing a level of arrogance, entitlement, and hubris that makes silly American kids in their flicks look positively dutiful, mature, stoical, and heroic by comparison. Van Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the belly, not syphilis. There is no evidence that Nietzsche ever had sex, period, a level of loneliness so heartbreaking it underscores my conviction that the writer of this trash, standing on tiptoe, couldn't reach the bottom of either man's boot.