12/31
After years apart, the star-crossed lovers discover that every path they’ve taken leads them back together
Local rebellious teenager Clotaire falls for his schoolmate Jackie – but gang violence leads him to a darker destructive path. Malik Frikah, who plays 17-year-old Clotaire in this film, was a world champion Breakdancer when he was 10 years old old.. One of the characters wears a Rolex Daytona Ceramic in the 1990s, but the watch was only released in 2016..
Mes MainsMusic by Gilbert BécaudLyrics by Pierre Delanoë
The first part, with the kids, is pretty good. The film should have ended there for the sake of the audience. And Gilles Lellouche would have directed one of the best French teenage romances of the decade.
The rest of the movie, the second act, is horrible
The actors François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos lack chemistry together, their acting in this movie is bland and without compromise. I suspect both actors should start rethinking their own careers in French cinema once the two newcomers Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah outshine them and steal the show in this confusing mediocre movie. At first it seems the movie strikes as a modern take of The Count of Monte Cristo ..
A stylized and tacky male gaze
I mean the old story of the wronged young rebel guy who returns for revenge and the search for his loved one. However it falls out with exaggerated and caricatured toxic masculinity. And in the half and end of second act the plot ends up losing credibility.
What we have already seen
The problem, beyond the burden of everything, is the strange determination that the film shows in claiming originality in each shot it offers without achieving it even once. Every time it comes to deciding, it always opts for the most formal, the most obvious. And so, it repeats, for three hours of the closest thing to a French blockbuster, with a good marketing and PR behind it, it is that the French audiences are going to see this year.