Élève libre (2008) - film review

Having failed his high school exams, 16-year-old Jonas pins his hopes on a career as a professional tennis player.  Once again, his hopes are dashed but a friend of the people he is living with, 30-something Pierre, takes pity on him and offers to give him private tuition.  At first, the arrangement works out well and Jonas makes progress in his studies.   But then Pierre begins to show a keen interest in his pupil’s sexual development.  Like all boys of his age, Jonas is preoccupied by his ignorance about sex, so Pierre’s openness on the subject is helpful, initially.  When his own sentimental feelings come into conflict with Pierre’s hedonistic philosophy to life, the teenager becomes confused and suspicious.  It is at this point that Jonas’ relationship with Pierre strays into much darker territory...

In what is possibly his darkest and most interesting film to date, acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse paints a sour indictment of our sexually liberated times and poses the question whether it is possible for human beings to live richer lives without moral or social limits.  As in Lafosse’s previous Nue propriété (2006), the drama revolves around the conflict between a vulnerable yet responsible adolescent and a manipulative, highly irresponsible adult, except that here the director ventures into a far more controversial area, that of child abuse.  To date, very few filmmakers have explored this sensitive subject with the seriousness it merits, and with reason, for this remains the one last taboo of our age.  In Élève libre, Lafosse confronts the issue head-on and delivers one of cinema’s most thought-provoking and uncompromising studies in human frailty in recent years.

One of the strengths of this film, indeed of Lafosse’s oeuvre in general, is that it doesn’t fall back on the obvious good-guy / bad-guy character simplifications.  The protagonists are all flawed, extremely complex individuals who are almost entirely responsible for the grief that comes their way.  Far from being the innocent victim, Jonas, the central character, almost luxuriates in the power that his sex-obsessed mentor Pierre has over him.  Their relationship begins in a subtly sadomasochistic vein, with Pierre quietly enjoying accentuating his pupil’s feelings of sexual and intellectual inadequacy.  Although he soon realises he has made a Faustian pact with a very unsavoury characater, Jonas stays with it because he believes, with the naivety of a lamb being courted by a salivating wolf, that Pierre has all the answers to life’s mysteries.  Likewise, Pierre is not an unsympathetic villain but someone who is perhaps even more deserving of pity than Jonas.  Despite his intellectual self-justification, his life is a sterile void, lacking meaning and purpose, relieved only by the distraction of hedonistic excess, the feeble opiate of a dying man.

Élève libre is not a comfortable film to watch, not just because it tackles a subject that most of us find difficult to deal with, but also because it shows us, with a bleakness that borders almost on black comedy, where our pleasure-obsessed society may be heading: towards a moral vacuum that is devoid of meaning and humanity.  Joachim Lafosse’s intelligent, unpretentious screenplay and direction are superbly complemented by strong central performances from Jonas Bloquet (remarkable in his first screen role) and Jonathan Zaccaï, two actors who are definitely worth watching out for.

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