Les Roseaux Sauvages
A French, film-loving ménage à trois with a bit of politics? That sounds a lot like „The Dreamers“, but Gorp quickly enlightened me that this would not be the case at all. In fact, a few crucial things are different:
– It’s actually a ménage à quatre
– The story does not take in Paris, but in the countryside (this is the most important difference in my opinion, because it changes the whole setting and the atmosphere of the film)
– The girl is not actually attractive, I suppose the country girl clothes do not help either. A movie doesn’t quite work when the guys all look better than the girl.
– All in all, I had the impression that the relationship between the characters was always a little thin and not exactly close; it was only at the end that Maité and Henri got close, the boys were never that close at all, and Serge barely even spoke to Maité.
I was quite pleasantly surprised how gay the whole movie was though. While in most ménage à trois stories you barely have any tidbits of homosexuality (think „Y tu mamá tambien“ or „The Dreamers“, there was even a real sex scene! Nevertheless, this was actually not a silly, generic coming out story, yay yay! I like how realistically the movie dealt with homosexuality, without being too moralistic. I especially liked how Serge turned Francois down, not because he was afraid of being homosexual, but because he needs a woman in his life. Ultimately he probably just preferred women.
By the way, I never realized how convenient French is for dirty talking. It is a cliché, but I have not quite believed it until I heard that you can simply say „Suce-moi“, which sounds somewhat disgusting but not as disgusting as the same in English or in German.
Within its genre (these coming of age stories), „Les Roseaux Sauvages“ surely is absolutely outstanding. It is realistic, it has interesting characters (especially Henri if you ask me) and quite a few good actors (except for Francois who is quite cute but somehow looks the same throughout the whole movie). Unlike „Les Valseuses“, I find this story of intertwining relationships very, very realistic and thus quite valuable.
Personally, I liked Maité & Henri’s relationship the best – I also thought the way in which the film dealt with the boys was incredibly realistic and sincere. Absolutely loved the ending by the river though – only one couple actually emerges (who were never close throughout the majority of the story) but it still left me with an overwhelmingly open-ended impression, which that last shot really beautifully underlines, I think. I found that really moving and genuinely unconventional? Haha, I guess I’m quite failing to make clear just why I find this film so awesome, but, like, I can name no more earnest and believable one about adolescence?