Le Péril jeune (1994) - film review

Four school friends - Bruno, Momo, Alain and Léon - are reunited in a hospital a few years after leaving high school.  A week ago, their friend Tomasi died from a drugs overdose, just days before his pregnant girlfriend Sophie is due to give birth to their child.   As they await the birth, the four friends solemnly recall their turbulent last year at school and try to make sense of their present situation...

With one full-length film - Riens du tout (1991) - and a few short films under his belt, director Cédric Klapisch made an indelible impression on French cinema with Le Péril jeune in 1994.  An insightful, brutally honest and lively portrayal of adolescence, the film was an instant hit with the public and has since become a cult classic.  It is regarded with particular affection by the generation it portrays, those who came of age in the mid-1970s.    

The main appeal of Le Péril jeune is its authenticity, its total lack of artifice and artistic embellishment.  The breezily naturalistic style, the ensemble of colourful yet believable characters and the skilfully blended mixture of humour and pathos are so appropriate for this film and would become the defining characteristics of much of Klapisch’s subsequent oeuvre.   Unlike many auteurs of his generation, Cédric Klapisch would have little difficulty attracting an audience, simply because his films are so true-to-life and so filled with life.

Anyone who grew up in the mid-seventies will see immediately how well this film reflects this generally glum and uninspiring era.  How well we recognise that pent-up neurotic antagonism which the adolescents of the day had for authority of any kind, and with good reason.  With the world in a parlous state (oil crises, economic turbulence, ecological disasters and Abba winning the Eurovision Song Contest), it was natural to blame the grown-ups who had brought all this about (being forced to wear tank tops and flared jeans may also have had something to do with it).  Unlike the rebels of the previous decade, who believed that waving a few banners and wearing Che Guevara tee shirts could change the world for the better, the teenagers in the 1970s had no interest in building a modern Utopia.  They just wanted to rip up the world they had and flush it down the toilet (preferably with a few tank tops and Abba singles).

One of the quirky delights of this film is that it features several actors who, although very well-known today, were pretty well unheard of when it was made.  Romain Duris, Vincent Elbaz, Élodie Bouchez and Hélène de Fougerolles are practically household names in France today but back in 1994 they were all newcomers to this game.  The meteoric rise to stardom which Romain Duris has enjoyed since he made his screen debut in Le Péril jeune, was largely fuelled by his appearances in Klapisch’s films, including the hit L’Auberge espagnole (2002).  Duris, who is tipped to be the next big thing in Hollywood, had his lucky break when he was spotted in the street by Cédric Klapisch’s casting director. (He had previously acted in Mademoiselle Personne, a semi-documentary by Jean-Louis Murat, although this film was never released).  A desultory arts student at the time, Duris had little, if any, enthusiasm for acting but was persuaded by Klapisch that he had great potential in this area.  The rest, as they say, is histoire...

© James Travers 2010

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