Et toi t’es sur qui? (2007) - film review

One summer, 15-year-old Elodie and her best friend Julie make up their minds to sleep with a boy for the first time.  Julie, a Goth nicknamed Batman by her classmates, has no qualms over who she goes to bed with, but the more sensitive Elodie hankers after the school beau Kevin, who has absolutely no interest in her.  During a work placement, Julie gives herself to a boy named Vincent, a meaningless liaison which serves merely to pressurise Elodie into throwing herself at the nearest available guy.  The nearest available guy turns out to be Nicolas, a cocky Don Juan-type who is well on his way to bedding the entire female half of his class.  Elodie’s passionless fumble with Nicolas serves at least one purpose, to make her aware of her feelings for Vincent...

For her first feature, Lola Doillon offers a nuanced portrait of adolescence that is every bit as authentic and skilfully composed as those which her father Jacques delivered in the course of his long and distinguished career.   The language may have evolved somewhat since Doillon père’s early coming-of-ages film dramas, today’s teenagers may be less inhibited than previous generations and the means by which they communicate may be very different, but the feelings, the desires and the crises remain the same.  Even if you cannot understand a word of what the characters are saying (and the latest mutation of teen street argot presents a challenge for the most fluent of French speakers), you know exactly what they are going through, as the combined onslaught of rampaging hormones and peer pressure make the acquisition of carnal knowledge objective numero uno.  Et toi t’es sur qui? avoids the tacky vulgarity of the American teen comedy which it superficially resembles and offers a far deeper and more perceptive analysis of adolescent sexual awakening.  Doillon’s light-touch direction and a smattering of well-judged humour do not obscure the seriousness of the underlying issues, but these certainly add to the film’s appeal.

Lola Doillon excels on both the writing and directing fronts, showing as much imagination and flair in the latter as she does insight and compassion in the former.  By allowing her cast of predominantly non-professional actors to improvise and adapt the dialogue to their own way of speaking, she achieves a keen-edged naturalism which makes it easy for an audience of any age group to empathise with the characters.  Of her likeable and remarkably talented young actors, only Christa Theret (playing the sexy but slightly scary Goth Julie) had any prior acting experience - she had previously appeared in Costa-Gavras’ Le Couperet (2005).  By contrast, Nicolas Schweri had no thought of starting a career as an actor and only went for a screen-test after being persuaded to do so when the casting director spotted him one day in the Paris Métro.  

There may be a lack of experience on the acting front, but there is certainly no lack of talent and we can expect at least some of the debutant thesps to get back in front of the camera and possibly forge a successful acting career.  Not only are all of the characters well-drawn and well-delineated, they are convincingly played and compel us to take a non-judgemental interest in their chaotic adolescent lives, even the bed-hopping teen-Casanova Nicolas, who manages to be both sickeningly cute and deliciously vile in equal measure.   If there is one stand out performance it has to be that of Lucie Desclozeaux - she conveys most vividly the brutal angst of adolescence, in particular the difficulty of sifting real feelings from spurious desires. 

Et toi t’es sur qui? is modern cinema at its best - an authentic slice-of-life that is both profound and engaging, crafted with intelligence and genuine feeling.   It is an auspicious debut for a young filmmaker who clearly has no intention of being daunted by her father’s reputation.  If this is anything to go by, Lola Doillon will have no difficulty winning for herself the mantle of grand auteur and making her mark on French cinema.

© James Travers 2011

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