Their children after them **
by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma
French film, 2:21 a.m.
Summer 1992. Two teenagers are bored in a deindustrialized valley in Lorraine and vegetate on the edge of a water reservoir. « On s'emmerde! », Anthony proclaims to his cousin. So they steal a canoe and cross the lake to meet their destiny. In one scene, we are plunged back into the atmosphere of Nicolas Mathieu's book, winner of the 2018 Goncourt Prize, of which the film is a faithful adaptation. An intimate and social chronicle over four summers (1992, 1994, 1996, 1998) of a youth who experiences their first love stories and seeks a future in the shadow of the now closed blast furnaces and disillusioned parents.
The Boukherma brothers, directors of genre films with an offbeat universe (Teddy, The Year of the Shark), give it the breadth and heady scent of nostalgia that emanated from the novel. Cinemascope images, lights radiating landscapes crushed by heat, saturated colors and a soundtrack from the 1990s form the polished setting. Far from the grayness and naturalism of Ken Loach-style social comedies. A bias that is a priori attractive. Just like its main actor, Paul Kircher, who immediately sets the tone for his character with a mixture of innocence and seriousness specific to this age of life when all hopes are still allowed. His presence on screen, his unique physique with this lock of hair which hides a half-closed eye, his very particular phrasing are imposing. They earned him the Marcello-Mastroianni prize for best debuting actor at the last Venice Film Festival.
A wise and somewhat smooth adaptation
We then follow without displeasure his missed meetings with Steph (Angelina Woreth), the inaccessible girl with whom he fell completely in love, his quarrel with Hacine (Sayyid El Alami), the boy from the neighboring city who stole a motorbike belonging to him. to his father, the divorce of his parents and the slow alcoholic drift of a father, played by Gilles Lellouche, witness to the malaise of an entire generation. The context, in fact, is never forgotten. That of a steel industry in agony, of worker solidarity which is crumbling, of the rise of racism and the weight of social determinisms. But what made Nicolas Mathieu's book so rich is barely touched upon here and only appears as the background to the romantic torments of his hero.
Hence the impression of a wise and somewhat smooth adaptation of the book. Brought back to its main plot – despite its duration of 2 hours 21 – it leaves aside the entire gallery of secondary characters which provided the spice and gave substance to this peripheral France hitherto rarely mentioned in literature. If the film, at the rhythm of the chronicle, perfectly captures the atmosphere of these languid summers, it leaves us a little distanced from its heroes.
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