Ma vraie vie à Rouen

I've really liked some of this duo's films, been unimpressed by others, but this was the only one that seemed like a waste of time and effort. Not that it's bad, exactly, just that there's so little point to it. The gimmick is that the teenage aspiring-figure-skater protagonist (played by an actual teenage aspiring figure skater) is given a vidcam for his birthday, then proceeds to film everything and everyone around him. Which is exactly as boring as that sounds.

This movie ends up in that "found footage" trap where the content has to be psuedo-random and mostly uneventful enough to sustain the illusion of being "real," yet professional actors are used, so that illusion is never convincing-we're obviously watching performers pretending to be "awkward" and "natural" on camera. The lead Etienne is OK but not very interesting or charismatic; his best friend is a bit more appealing. This is supposedly a "coming out" story, but despite our hero proclaiming early on that this is the year he will lose his virginity, nothing happens on that front-not even flirting-until the very end. Indeed, the only thing that really "happens" is that the lead annoys everyone by insistently filming everyone all the time, even when they explicitly ask him not to. It's a miracle his best friend tolerates this as long as he does.

This is just one more proof that unless you have a very, very good reason for using the "found footage" gimmick (as in, say, the "Paranormal Activity" series), it's better to simply do a conventionally scripted and shot narrative. Better for viewers, at least. Or in this case, it might also have been possible/better to do a documentary about the lead's real life. Landing somewhere in between, "My Life on Ice" isn't as shapeless as watching someone else's home movies, but it's still pretty tedious as fictional entertainment. Unless you find the lead particularly attractive or relatable, there's nothing much to hold attention. Within its chosen limitations it's a decently-crafted movie, but a failed experiment that doesn't reward the effort it took to make it-or that it takes to watch it.

This film is so subtle that you never really get it until the very end. There are clues along the way, but they are easy to miss if you are not paying attention. It is a slice of life film, very natural and paced realistically. In fact you get so caught up in the naturalness that you neglect to recall why you are watching to begin with although along the way you do get jarred into the reality of the drama but again it is so elusive you have to question if you really get it. The cast is absolutely outstanding across the board and very seductive so you have to be interested even if you have no idea where it is going. There are some very erotic scenes but they tease you rather than provide a sense of direction so aimlessly you continue saying to yourself where is this going and why am I here?

This is a coming of age story about a young gay man who likes to film people with is movie camera. He films absolutely everyone who is involved in his life but his family, his straight friend and his mother's boyfriend are the main subjects of his intense study.

It's actually a very unusual film and the way it is shown through the lens of the boy's camera is an approach to story telling that I have not seen in any other film. It records his passage through about a year of his adolescence, with plenty of candid and close up studies of his mother and grandmother as well as the two main men in his life, who both happen to be quite handsome men. It also records how he falls in love with his friend and his disappointment when he realises that his friend is definitely straight! Because of the unusual approach in filming it may not be to everyone's liking but it certainly left me feeling good. It's really quite a beautiful story.

I immediately liked this movie simply because our hero is very handsome and poetic, and his best friend is even more handsome, but I wondered how the movie, all supposedly filmed by our hero and those in his milieu, would fill an hour and forty minutes. Have no fear, I was drawn into it and the leisurely pacing simply added to the poetry and visual beauty of the scenes.

It's a lot like the movie "Garcon Stupide" in its cinéma-vérité feel, but the simple, straightforward journey of one year in this boy's life makes for a more cohesive movie, I think.

The grandmother is reminiscent of Gena Rowlands. I don't know if that's good or bad, it just is. Most people would say that's good.

I enjoyed the travelogue aspect of the movie, the interesting bits and pieces of Rouen and other places that you're never going to see on the Travel Channel. But the heart of the film is the relationships between the characters, and the way those relationships are ruled by our hero's desires and obsessions.

For most of the film, everything is a matter of suggestion. Our hero is screamingly gay, but only his camera-work screams it out loud. He yearns for his teacher-cum-mother's-boyfriend, who sees this and maybe even likes this a little, but we never see anything come of this on screen, if anything happens at all.

His happiness will probably have to take another form.

Etienne a sixteen year old teenager lives with his widowed mother in Rouen. For his birthday, his grand-mother gives him something that will completely change his life: a video camera. From then onwards, he begins to film everyone around him (his mother, his grand-mother, his best pal, Ludovic his history and geography teacher) alternately with important events that happen to him in the beginning of the year 2002: his training in figure skating for the final, the transition at the Euro or the upheaval caused by the first results of the presidential elections with Jacques Chirac against the FN leader Jean Marie Le Pen...

They gave vigor to the musical again with "Jeanne and the Perfect Guy" (1998), they gave a new lease of life for the road movie in "the Adventures of Felix" (2000). The couple OLivier Ducastel-Jacques Martineau (behind the camera as well as in life) scores and signs with this particular exercise of style which brings the cinema to its basic roots which consist in pure filming. Indeed, all the movie is made through Etienne's camera and handled by a non-professional actor. A little like in "the Blair Witch Project" (1999), it takes a little time to get used to the incessant movements of the camera but once you overcame this difficulty, one can without any risk immerse oneself in the video made by Etienne and discover his (true) life in Rouen on account of the two director's intentions.

The camera gives Etienne a meaning to his life, a reason to live and it enables him to better understand the world that surrounds him. Moreover, Etienne is a teenager and adolescence is a difficult time because it's a transition between childhood and adulthood and in a way, the camera is here to reassure him, to make him gain self-confidence. By handling it, he feels safe enough to film a time of his life in bloom: a will to find true love (this year will be the year of love), curiosity about his body (he films parts of it) and affirmations of his passions (video, figure skating). On another extent, with his camera Etienne makes all the people he films go through all the possible reactions: from amusement to irritation through embarrassment (on these moments, it's nearly voyeurism) and his treasure has a real power on the filmed people because they often ask Etienne to stop filming them but without success (the sequence when Ariane Ascaride threatens his son to confiscate his camera but ends up giving it up is a good example).

By describing a delicate portrait of their young main character, by directing him according to their indications, the 2 real authors of this flick still remain faithful to their favorite topic: search for happiness. Something which affects the spectator too and with "my true life on ice in Rouen", they have succeeded once again in fulfilling their pledges: to make the spectator happy during all the film and we leave the projection with a big smile.

That said, one can have a few reservations about their third movie: not all the clichés linked to adolescence have been evacuated and the amateurish side of the whole may sometimes tire. Then, it seems a nit unlikely to me that Etienne's history-geography teacher can live with his mother. It's also a shame that the screenplay is often repetitive (the characters who express their annoyance when Etienne constantly films them). In a way, this last fault is nearly normal. The film-makers couldn't avoid him.

But overall it would be out of place to deny oneself at the vision of this delicate and sensitive movie with nearly a documentary aspect which isn't to be ranked in the same line as the terrible "Benny's video" (1992) by Michael Haneke. And for the film-makers, it is a faultless beginning of career so far. Let's hope it lasts.

Remark: "my True Life on Ice in Rouen" was shot in the city where I live: Rouen! So, it was funny to see familiar places in a movie.