La Fille de 15 ans (1989)
Directed by Jacques Doillon

Film Review

La Fille de 15 ans is a subtle yet poignant film which explores the complexity and brittleness of human relationships - both across and within the generations - with a rare sensitivity and insight.  This is a genuine film d'auteur, a film charged with sincerity, humanity and uncompromising realism, from a director who specialises in this kind of work and, in doing so, shows that he is a worthy successor to the more prominent figures of the French New Wave.  Jacques Doillon has yet to win the status accorded to Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, and the like -  but, as the film amply demonstrates, he is a director with a distinctive artistic vision, who manages to capture the poetry and fragility of human experience in his wondrously understated and eloquent films.

Doillon makes this particular work an especially personal affair by playing one of the three principal characters in the film.  His quiet yet intense portrayal of a solitary man who cannot contain his desire for a teenage girl, even at the risk of losing his son forever, is heartbreaking, making this a melancholic and ironic reflection on the many varied shades of love.  Rightly, Doillon keeps his character in the background, like a lingering shadow, allowing his two younger co-stars to carry most of the drama.   This approach works because Judith Godrèche and Melvil Poupaud both succeed in portraying interesting and convincing characters with an extraordinary talent.

Godrèche is spell-binding, providing the film with its focal point, and it is hard for the spectator to reconcile her very visible youth with her maturity as an actress - Doillon could not have chosen a better young lady to feature in his film.   Melvil Poupaud is no less impressive, again looking far more mature than his actual mid-teens would suggest.  He works perfectly alongside Godrèche, appearing very much the innocent young Adam to her all-knowing fully-formed Eve.  In his first significant acting part (for which he was nominated for a César in 1990), Poupaud manages to convey all the hurt, confusion, naivety and rebelliousness that we associate with teenage boys as they pass through the painful threshold towards adulthood.

Thanks to these three sublime low-key, naturalistic performances, the relationship between the three characters in this film is so convincing, so intense, that we are compelled to feel something of their anguish, turmoil and helplessness.  This is a film with great depth and poetry, beautifully photographed and skilfully directed with self-restraint and intelligence.

Film Synopsis

Juliette is a girl of fifteen years who thinks she has understood all there is to know about love.  Her present beau is a boy of her own age, Thomas, with whom she enjoys a close but, so far, platonic relationship.  Thomas is about to go on holiday to Ibiza with his father Willy, a divorced man in his mid-forties, and insists that Juliette goes with them.  Staying at a solitary villa on a lovely stretch of coastline, this privileged threesome appears set for a harmonious holiday, but beneath the apparent calm there are some dangerous undercurrents.  It all begins when Thomas, to prove himself, embarks on a foolhardy swim to a nearby island.

During her friend's absence, Juliette becomes concerned for his safety and confides her fears in his father, who begins to see her not as a girl, but as a young woman.  Of course Thomas returns, unharmed, but by this time Juliette realises that his father is strongly attracted to her.  Knowing that a long-term affair with Willy is out of the question, Juliette decides to get it all over with as quickly as possible.  She will let him seduce her, allow him to think she reciprocates his feelings, and then coldly dump him before things go too far.  By doing this, Juliette is confident that she and Thomas will become inseparable.  Oblivious to the game the young girl is playing, Willy grows ever more attached to her, putting at risk his relationship with his son...