Diabolo menthe

Movie of a generation, "Diabolo menthe" was a success as it was one of the first showing its youth with sincerity. It is now a real testimony of what was to be young in the 60's. School, parents, friends, society, it is interesting to see how things has so much changed - and at the same time, not that much: childs are always child, the dreamed discipline of glorious past times doesn't exist, ...

If the movie is an interesting testimony, I was not thrilled by it as a movie, and, even if the youg actors do not have to blush of their performances, I rate this just as okay.

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.

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.

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.

Insight-filled story of one year (1963-64) in the lives of two French sisters, living in Paris with their divorced mother and trying their best to cherish the joy while coping with the pain of growing up. Director Kurys, who dedicated this, her first film, to her own sister "who still hasn't returned my orange sweater," obviously knows whereof she speaks, since the character's ages correspond to her own growing up years. Nevertheless, the actual time period doesn't become clear until late in the movie, and the characters and incidents are certainly universal.

As the older sister, Odile Michel is lovely, and does a capable job with her role. The gem in this movie, though, is Eleanore Klarwein, who is captivating as the younger, more sensitive sibling who doesn't yet understand all that is going on around her, but struggles onward to meet each day nonetheless.