Interdit aux moins de 13 ans

Lucie sur Seine reminds me of some of the films I watched when I would attend the Chicago Film Festival. The film holds the viewer just interested enough so as to feel like he or she has not wasted his or her time, but it does not leave one with much.

The plot begins like a thriller. Jean is a young married man working a boring job as a delivery driver of hand towels for businesses in an immigrant heavy section of Paris. Wanting money to buy a truck and go into business, Jean decides to rob one of the stores on his route. The robbery goes badly. Jean is unmasked by an accountant. He kills both her and a security guard. He is also seen by a woman at the store (he glimpses her fleeing). He believes it to be a young free spirited Arab immigrant whom he has a crush on. At this point the film abandons the thriller elements and becomes a drama. Jean follows the witness around and falls in love her. The woman has a younger brother of fourteen who is the leader of a gang of immigrant boys. Their parents believe the woman is a bad influence on her brother. Although the police are still investigating the murders (they believe it was committed by one of the immigrants), the focus of the movie has become the problems of an immigrant family.

Lucie sur Seine is simply fair. Also, the filmmaker could have made certain elements clearer than he did. For instance, the immigrant woman is introduced only after the killings, in spite of the fact that Jean is supposed to have a crush on her.

Incidentally, the print I saw translated the film's title as, Forbidden to Those Under Thirteen. What is forbidden? Murder? Robbery?

The action takes place in lugubrious suburbs.A young man,tired of working for almost nothing,tired of his routine life,tired of his wife and tired of everything steals money and kills two people almost in a dream.A woman has seen him .He thinks it's a girl named Lucie.He begins a bizarre relationship with her.

The detective plot is not what you expect.Actually,most of the time ,it takes a back seat to the depiction of the daily life on this wrong side of the town.And anyway,the Police are cardboard characters,the biggest flaw of Bertucelli's movie.

Though highly praised by the critics at the time of release,"Interdit aux moins de treize ans" might not grab today's audience.Its very slow pace is sometimes annoying.Very crude language.

My review was written in February 1983 after a screening at Manhattan's MoMA.

Jean-Louis Bertuccelli, best known in the U. S. for his 1970 "Ramparts of Clay", and more recently the Annie Girardot-starrer "No TIme for Breakfast" (originally titled "Dr. Francoise Gailland") is back with an offbeat realistic drama "Lucie sur Seine". Though lacking European star names, picture could find a niche on the arty circuit via its unusual look at a side of Paris (its suburban slum areas) omitted from most Gallic filmers' itineraries.

Styled as a film noir in the vein of Marcel Carne's classics, "Lucie" concerns a young towel deliveryman Louis (Patrick Depeyrat), unhappily married to Chantal (Maryline Even). To escape his routine, he robs the store where Chantal works, killing two people in the process.

A pretty girl working there, Lucie (Sandra Montaigu) sees the crime but instead of turning Louis in teams up with him as the film segues into the American type of "They Live by Night" and "You Only Live Once" genre. A key subplot deals with Lucie's precocious half-brother Nonoeil (of Arab extraction), who with the other local street urchins arranges for strip shows and other porno acts for underage youngsters' viewing. (Film's 1982 French release title "Interdit aux Moins de 13 Ans" refers to this, translating as "Forbidden to Those Under 13 Years Old".)

Strong on atmostphre (particularly the night visuals of Paris), "Lucie" is burdened with an unconvincing climax in which the inevitable police confrontation with the anti-hero doesn't play well.

Depeyrat is inexpressive in the lead role, but Sandra Montaigu (who also collaborated in the script writing) is an attractive heroine. Gabriel Yared (who also scored "Invitation au Voyage") has provided hypnotic musical background.