Tout ce qui brille (2010) - film review

Ely and Lila are like two sisters.  They have known one another since childhood and have become inseparable.  They share everything and dream of another life, far from the reality of their present existence in the suburbs of Paris.  Just how far are they prepared to go in their attempt to gatecrash a world which is not their own...?

A bubbly amalgam of teen movie, social satire and romantic comedy, Tout ce qui brille proved to be one of the most surprising French box office hits in 2010.  Its popularity is hard to account for, although this may be put down to its novelty value (how many other films portray the suburbs as a cool place to hang out?) and its superficial charms.  The basic story premise is hardly original - two feisty girls from the less salubrious suburbs of Paris crowbar their way into the jetset by a little mendacity, seduction and general skulduggery, with predictable results.  Think of it as Sex in the Suburbs, French-style.  

In their directorial debut feature, Hervé Mimran and Géraldine Nakache succeed where many have failed, to take a pretty crass concept and develop it into an entertaining film that offers an honest reflection on contemporary attutides to social status.  The film is obviously aimed at the youth market and has no pretensions to be anything other than what it is - a trash teen movie which hammers out the glib message that there is more to life than Prada.   There may be some significance in the fact that the film centres around two friends who are a Jew and a Muslim and makes no reference to their religion.  A youth culture that is racially blind can surely be no bad thing.  Tout ce qui brille is a fun little diversion, if somewhat lacking in substance.

© filmsdefrance.com 2010

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