Juillet août (2016)
Directed by Diastème

Film Review

Director Diastème provoked a storm of controversy with his 2015 film Un Français, which served up an uncompromising but fairly accurate view of racism in modern day France.  His follow-up film, Juillet août, is unlikely to have anything like the same impact and, anodyne to a fault, it risks being forgotten even before it has completed its first theatrical release.  The director's third feature shows nothing of the daring of its predecessor but is a pleasant enough time waster, a typically Gallic take on adolescence that cannot help looking like an updated version of Claude Miller's L'Effrontée (1985).  Diastème admits to having been inspired by Ron Howard's Parenthood (1989), but other influences are all too readily spotted, notably Claude Pinoteau's La Boum (1980) and Diane Kurys's Diabolo menthe (1977).

Released in July 2016, Juillet août is typical summer fare for French cinema screens, but thankfully it avoids most of the obvious clichés and brings a freshness to an overly familiar genre that, quite frankly, has been done to death in recent years.  An astonishing contrast with Diastème's previous film, this much sunnier feel-good offering manages to be sentimental without being soppy, funny without being crude or cynical.  The casting choices are excellent, particularly the two lead actresses - Alma Jodorowsky (granddaughter of the surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky) and Luna Lou - who play the chalk-and-cheese sisters.  As the gobby rebel Laura (a female version of Jean-Pierre Léaud's Antoine Doinel in Les 400 coups).  Lou virtually steals the film and is assuredly one of the most promising French actresses to make her screen debut in 2016.

With strong support from Patrick Chesnais, Pascale Arbillot and Thierry Godard, the film doesn't disappoint on the acting front but it is mildly let own by a script that feels too flat and mechanical, lacking the spontaneity of the performances and the mise-en-scène.  With most of the film shot using a handheld camera, it achieves an intimacy that forces us to see the world from the perspective of the two wildly different sisters, the contrasting moods of adolescence emphasised (perhaps a little too unsubtly) by the dramatic shift in location from the sunny south to the miserable north.  Juillet août is a likeable film but whilst it manages to avoid merely reproducing similar coming-of-age pieces of the past it scarcely adds anything new to the genre.  What it does reveal, however, is Diastème's remarkable versatility and a flair for conjuring up engaging slice-of-life cinema from the most banal of subjects.

Film Synopsis

Laura and Joséphine are two teenage sisters who could hardly be more different.  With Laura, 14, happy to play the perpetual grouch, Joséphine, 18, has started taking an interest in the opposite sex.  As is normal for girls of their age, both are in a state of emotional confusion, and it doesn't help that their parents are separated and live at opposite ends of the country.  During the summer, they divide their holidays between their mother, who lives on the sunny Côte d'Azur, and their father, who lives in rainy Brittany.  The girls' mother has re-married, to Michel, and is now expecting her third child - news that Laura takes badly.  As her sulky younger sister mopes about in boredom and contempt, Joséphine starts an affair with an attractive young man named Romain.  Back in Brittany, the two girls' mood is not helped by the bad weather and they wonder if they should break the news of their mother's pregnancy to their father.  As the summer drags on, Romain turns up to continue his affair with Joséphine...