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 In cinemas Boxing Day [MA15+]
Director: Riad Sattouf
Runtime: 87mins
Riad Sattouf’s debut feature The French Kissers is a sort of Gallic answer to Superbad; both films are bawdy comedies of sexual awakening, and both present ragingly hormonal teenage protagonists on a mission to shed their troublesome virginity. On a deeper level, though, both films present an honest and unsentimental view of the adolescent experience, with central characters who are clumsy, awkward and desperately uncool, but real and likeable enough that you actually care about them and want them to succeed. Laying the triumphs and disasters of adolescence bare in raw, zits and all detail, The French Kissers is nonetheless one of the most funny and charming films of the year.
Hervé (Vincent Lacoste) and Camel (Anthony Sonigo) are best friends, whose lives are an endless parade of terrible haircuts, ugly sweaters and stinging rejection; the pair obsess over girls, cataloguing their various virtues, but the closest they actually get is in the epic quantity of porn they consume together. Their school’s resident dirt-bag Loïc (Baptiste Huet) has an uncontrollable pull over the opposite sex, and they observe his various exploits in horror as girls shut them down again and again. Adding insult to injury, Hervé shares a tiny apartment with his divorced mother (Noémie Lvovsky), and his every bodily emission comes painfully into focus. In the midst of all this, Hervé meets Aurore (Alice Trémolière) on the bus to school; confident, pretty and self-assured, Aurore seems way out his league, but she develops a fascination with the strange, immature creature, and the pair embark upon a fumbling relationship.
Sattouf is an expert at bringing out the relationships between his characters, and it’s in these low-key moments that the film works best. Hervé and Camel make for convincing sidekicks; Hervé and Camel engage in near-constant rivalry and one-upmanship, the two nonetheless share everything, and their candour is easy and unforced. Hervé and Aurore, too, make for a convincing pair, and a scene where the two sit in a cafe, projecting themselves onto passers-by and imagining possible futures, is one of the film’s highlights. In its own low-key way, the film also makes for a compelling portrait of contemporary French society. Sattouf engages with the idea of multiculturalism and class in ways that are so subtle you barely even notice, making for a film that is a lot less didactic than others that address these same ideas. Leaving all this stuff aside, though, The French Kissers is a rollicking, undemanding romp of a movie, and well-worth checking out.
****
ALASDAIR DUNCAN
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