Les Beaux Gosses/French Kissers

@ Cinéma du Parc

lundi, Monday le 26 octobre
6 p.m./ 1800 h

(English text follows...)

Devenir adulte n’est jamais simple, mais nous finissons quand même par passer au travers de la puberté, tôt ou tard, d’une façon ou d’une autre. Pour le meilleur et pour le pire.

Les films qui parlent du phénomène du passage à l’âge adulte viennent nous chercher en ce qu’ils nous rappellent nos plus doux-amers souvenirs. Ils sont une vibrante nostalgie de l’époque où nous avons appris nos leçons de vie parfois de façon brutale. On se souvient du temps où…mais oui, on revit notre propre évolution – la période de la crise d’adolescence où nous passions de mômes capricieux à de gentils adultes. Ayant tous passé par là, nous sourions à l’évocation de notre propre période d’adolescence. Ces films ravivent notre mémoire, faisant reluire nos éclats d’étourderie. On se languit et se souvient du « doux temps » de notre innocente jeunesse..

Les Beaux Gosses (French Kissers), film en compétition officielle, ce printemps 2009, dans le cadre de la Quinzaine des Réalisateurs au Festival de Cannes. Cinémagique a le plaisir et l’honneur de vous le présenter, lundi, le 26 octobre, au Cinéma du Parc. Une comédie croustillante teintée de gags grivois à la Mack Sennett, roi de la comédie et du cinéma burlesque avec des blagues frôlant parfois le ridicule.

Les histoires traitant du passage à l’âge adulte sont à tout jamais rattachées à une époque et à un endroit précis. Des souvenirs personnels à peine déguisés du réalisateur lui-même. Les Beaux Gosses explore cette jungle impénétrable de ce qu’est un adolescent dans une petite ville bretonne en 2008. Et pourtant, quoique ces ados Beaux Gosses 2008 soient tout aussi différents de ceux dans Blackboard Jungle (1955), malgré qu’ils soient au temps de l’informatique, malgré une vie de médiation depuis l’enfance, malgré leur génération et culture MTV, malgré qu’ils soient conscients du virus du sida, malgré une omniprésente pornographie, ces ados nous arrivent comme d’innocents personnages tout naïfs tels que nous l’étions il a très longtemps déjà sur une planète très lointaine.

Hervé (qui ressemble quelque peu à Michael Sera) est un vulgaire petit connard qui veut séduire, qui se masturbe et qui rêve à ses fantasmes. Son univers d’aujourd’hui – comme le nôtre jadis – conspire contre lui, l’amène sur des sentiers dangereux, l’incite à cesser de réfléchir en enfant, à repenser son rôle d’adulte, à surmonter d’innombrables obstacles tels qu’aliénation, opportunités illimitées, la mort, les drogues, l’existentialisme, l’aventure, confusion, flirt, commérages, l’incertitude, l’irresponsabilité parentale, l’insécurité, l’instabilité, libido, mensonges, faible amour-propre, musique, frivolités amoureuses, discours philosophiques, précocité, psychisme, sauvagerie, concentration sur soi, sexe, sexe et re-sexe…Complétez ce programme et vous voilà diplômé adulte !

Bref, les films sur le passage à l’âge adulte sont de nature embêtante. En voici quelques paramètres :

• Pas de romans feuilletons à l’eau de rose.

• Sans banalités, sans soucis d’idéal, et sans fausses émotions.

• Sans exploitation ni lascivité.

• Le résumé d’une génération. Avec ses particularités tout en étant de portée universelle.

Les films sur le passage à l’âge adulte ne se passent pas seulement avec des gars. Rappelez-vous les filles merveilleuses dans ce type de films : Juno; Girl Interrupted; Bend It Like Beckham; To Kill A Mockingbird; Whale Rider; 16 Candles; Rabbit Proof Fence; Celui de Peter Jackson, Heavenly Creatures ainsi que (dois-je le mentionner?) Lolita. Ces films sont aussi de style très Canadien/Québécois. On n’a qu’à penser à : J’ai tué ma mère; Les Bons Débarras; celui de John N. Smith, New Waterford Girls; My American Cousin de Sandy Wilson; Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfus est venu à Montréal à la suite de American Graffiti de Georges Lucas).

On découvre d’excellents nouveaux réalisateurs de films traitant de ce même sujet : Truffaut avec (Les Mistons, Les 400 Coups); Fellini (I Vitelloni, et puis a suivi Amarcord); Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso), Francis Ford Coppola (You’re A Big Boy Now); Peter Bogdanovich (Last Picture Show). Et ceux du réalisateur John Hughes : (Breakfast Club, Ferrie Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink); Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Vidotapes); L’acteur et bédéiste Riad Sattouf, auteur de plusieurs fils de comédie, est le réalisateur et co-scénariste de cette comédie tout comme s’il l’avait extirpée tout droit de ses bandes dessinées.

Venez et préparez-vous à bien rigoler !

****

On Monday October 26th, Cinémagique is delighted to be showing you Les Beaux Gosses (French Kissers) at the Cinema du Parc. It's a raunchy sex comedy, abounding in ribald humour, Mack Sennett slapstick and bad taste gags. Director Riad Sattouf (who grew up as a teen in Brittany) explores the ever impenetrable secret teen jungle of provincial Brittany. Author/artist of prodigiously funny adult comic books (La vie secrète des jeunes), Sattouf co-wrote this notable first movie as though he lifted his script right out of his comicbook panels.

Growing up is never easy. We all bumble though pubescence, sooner or later, one way or another. And for better or worse.

Which mebbe explains why coming-of-age movies are our most beloved (IMDb lists 2110 titles), our most bittersweet of genres - they're our instant nostalgia back to that time when, our being teens on the cusp of maturity, we first learned our own cruel life lessons. Ah, yes! We watch and remember our own transition - brat adolescent to emerging adult - our never having a clue what was going down at the time. So, having been there, done that, we smile. Coming-of-age movies are our memory prods, buffing shiny our dross of forgetfulness. And we still pine and probe after that ''simpler time'' of our own long ago innocence.

While these Beaux Gosses 2008 ados are as different from the teens in Blackboard Jungle (1955) - despite their computerese, despite their mediated life from infancy, despite their MTV explicitness, despite their AIDS-awareness, despite their ubiquitous pornography - they come across as sweet innocent naifs as we remember ourselves to have been long long ago. Hervé's a fantasizing, masturbating wiseass charmer (with a passing resemblance to Michael Sera). His world now - as ours then - conspires against him at every turn, makes him navigate perilous passages, forces him to give up thinking like a kid, begin auditioning for his role as adult, overcome a veritable A to Z of hurdles: alienation, boundless possibility, confusion, death, drugs, existentialism, flings, flirtations, gossip, gropings, irresponsible parents, insecurities, instability, libido, lies, low self-esteem, music, petting, philosophical rambles, precocity, psyche, savagery, self-focus, sex, sex, sex, and sex, Get through and you graduate into adulthood.

Iconic coming-of-age movies are a tricky genre to execute, forever locked in their own time-and-place capsule: coded, personal, barely disguised remembrances of a filmmaker's own adolescence. Consider the genre parameters:

• No soap opera.
• No banality, no high-mindedness, nor sentimentality.
• No exploitation nor prurience.
• A summation of a generation. Particular and yet universal.
  

Because they're so hard to pull off, we often first spot the next breakthrough director in his coming-of-age movie. Consider: Truffaut (Les Mistons, Les 400 Coups); Fellini (I Vitelloni, and then later, Amarcord); Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso), Francis Ford Coppola (You're A Big Boy Now); Peter Bogdanovich (Last Picture Show). Director John Hughes made a career of his adolescence:(Breakfast Club, Ferrie Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink); Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Videotapes).

Coming of age movies are not only boy genres. Remember all the spectacular girls we saw come of age on film: Juno; Girl Interrupted; Bend It Like Beckham; To Kill A Mockingbird; Whale Rider; 16 Candles; Rabbit Proof Fence; Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, An Education (last week) and (dare I mention it?), Lolita. Coming of age is also a very Canadian/Québecois subset: J'ai tué ma mère, Les Bons Débarras; John N. Smith's delicious New Waterford Girls; Sandy Wilson's My American Cousin; Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfus came to Montreal right off the set of George Lucas' American Grafitti).

So come, prepared to laugh. At these kids. At what we once were..

peter

****

The Damned United

...the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat

by Bob Foster

One of the most exciting sporting events I've ever attended was a UEFA Cup qualifying soccer match between Amsterdam Ajax and Bochum in 1997 held in Amsterdam's home stadium. The max 70,000 crowd was like one living being, moving together, screeching together, breathing together. The final score was Ajax 6 to Bochum's 4, a high scoring game, that moved the home crowd to even greater heights of excitement. The atmosphere is difficult to imagine if one has never been to a crucial European soccer match.

The film Damned United takes the excitement of European soccer and brings it into the realm of Shakespearian tragedy while at the same time illustrating the old TV Sports adage of "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat".

The story, based on a creative non-fiction “novel”, is essentially about real life Brian Clough http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clough , one of the greatest soccer coaches ever in England and how after bringing Derby County from the bottom of second division to the top of the first division in the 60s/70s he took over Leeds United from Don Revie (of anything-to-win renown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Revie ) who then became manager of the England national team. Brian's 44 days with Leeds was his "agony of defeat" hiatus that taught him how to deal with life more like an adult (and less like a “braggart out of his depth”) and the importance of excellent friends and help which he had in Peter Taylor - and which makes up the keen yet chaste “bromance” that underlies the whole story. Clough had a big mouth which got him into trouble and apparently he didn’t lose the lip (there is a clip of boxer Mohammad Ali talking about him) but learned how to use it more wisely, perhaps with some help from Taylor. The relationship with Taylor is contrasted against Clough’s rocky relationship with Revie and Derby chairman Longson.

Clough is played by Michael Sheen (David Frost in FROST/NIXON, Tony Blair in THE QUEEN). Taylor is played by Timothy Spall (SECRETS AND LIES and more recently HARRY POTTER). Don Revie is played by look-alike Colm Meaney, with Jim Broadbent (TOPSY TURVY amongst many other superb films) as the Derby chairman Sam Longson.

The title Damned United can refer to the damned period Clough spent with Leeds United but also how the pair of Clough/Taylor were temporarily damned then united then re-united after Clough worked his way through some pettiness to see the bigger picture that life as an adult has to offer. Apparently, there were still some ups and downs to come between the two but they aren’t mentioned in the film.

I liked the prudent and always clear flashbacks used to show how Clough got to his Leeds “damned” disaster and then a final flash forward to show just how much he really did learn.

I highly recommend the film for both soccer/”foootball” aficionados who like “guy” sports flicks though the game shots are few, but more for those who thoroughly appreciate a character study that shows how man can overcome tragic faults and finally become a human hero.

For a wealth of other reviews of the film see http://www.mrqe.com/movies/m100071909 and for cast/crew particulars see http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1226271/

****

...and here's J. Paul Higgins' take of the same film...

...enjoyable, but not quite a triumph

by j. paul higgins

On the surface The Damned United is a sports movie, a dramatization of the real-life career of English football manager Brian Clough from 1968 through 1974. Luckily for those with no real knowledge or interest in soccer, the film focuses on a more universal theme: a man struggling with success and failure in a rapidly evolving society at the dawn of the multi-media age. There are soccer sequences but surprisingly few.

The film starts as Brian Clough - the most successful young football manager in England - arrives to take a new job as the manager of the Leeds United, the top team in the top division. The team has dominated the game for years under the long-time management of Don Revie, who has moved on to lead the national team. On the way to his first day on the job Mr. Clough stops and gives a television interview. He scoffs at the idea that he will have any trouble filling Don Revie's shoes. He also brazenly states that the team may be winners but are also thugs and cheats and not worthy of being called real champions. The players and board of directors have heard about the interview by the time he arrives at work and not surprisingly Mr. Clough's first day on the job does not go very well.

Director Tom Hooper flips back and forth between Mr. Clough's struggles to succeed at Leeds and his earlier remarkable success in bringing Derby, a feeble second division squad from no hopers to the top of their division and then to the top of the first division. The flash backs are illuminating as we see how Mr. Clough's arrogance and ferocious ambition develop but are moderated by assistant manager Peter Taylor, Clough's long-time friend, partner and collaborator. Importantly Taylor did not follow Clough to Leeds and we learn that many people see this a big problem. Also in the flashbacks we see how the rivalry between Clough and Don Revie developed and turned into a personal feud.

The cast is excellent. Clough is portrayed by Michael Sheen (David Frost in Frost/Nixon, Tony Blair in The Queen). Colm Meaney (The Snapper, Gene Hunt in the original version of Life On Mars) plays Don Revie. Peter Taylor is portrayed by Timothy Spall (Beadle in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street). The cast also includes several excellent British character actors.

The movie is very good at evoking the mood of Britain in the late-60s and and early 70s, divided by class and regional bickering but beginning to open to the outside world. Clough as portrayed by Michael Sheen is a fascinating and strangely sympathetic character despite his screaming fits, pettiness and overwhelming arrogance. The plot is intriguing and interesting enough to be enjoyable. And yet ...

In the end I was left with the feeling of a near miss. I think the director was very ambitious, trying to explore the complexity of Clough's personality, the symbiotic relationship between Clough and Taylor and the evolving business of professional sports all without driving away the non-sports fan. For me the Clough and Taylor relationship somehow did not ring true, leaving a nagging hole at the centre of the film. An enjoyable film but not quite a triumph.

j. paul higgins


Damned United (1:40) : is opening at the AMC this Friday: 12:10, 2:45, 5:15, 7:45, 10:10

An Education: Lynn Barber's memoir

Mavens:

This chronicle is for those who screened An Education Saturday. And those who didn't - but intend to, when An Education opens October 23rd.

Here, from the Times of London, is Lynn Barber's telling memoir of the making of the film, An Education, based on her own memoir of what she calls a 'dark and shameful memory' of her childhood. It tells endless truths on how movies get written, financed,staffed, cast, produced - or don't as the case may be. I thought you might be interested.

peter

Lynn Barber: My age of innocence

At a party the other day someone asked me quite seriously what I thought about the Oscar chances for “my” film, An Education. Well, I said, equally seriously, Carey Mulligan (who plays me) seems a shoo-in for best-actress nomination, and there is also much talk of Alfred Molina (who plays my father) as best supporting actor. I think Rosamund Pike deserves a supporting nomination because she is absolutely hilarious in the film, but it’s a “well-known fact” that comedy never wins Oscars. And of course Nick Hornby deserves an Oscar for best film adaptation. All this uttered with convincing gravity, as if I actually knew what I was talking about. Since when did I become a film expert? How on earth did it happen?

I suppose it all began six years ago when I wrote about my schoolgirl affair with a conman, Simon, an associate of Peter Rachman, the notorious slum landlord. It was 1960; I was 16, living with my parents in Twickenham, when this suave older man in a red Bristol sports car drew up beside me at a bus stop and offered me a lift home. For the next two years I led a strange double life — going to school and swotting for my A-levels during the week, then swanning off with Simon for weekends in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam.

What was extraordinary was that my parents let me — up till then they’d put all their energy into urging me, their only child, to win every possible scholarship and go to Oxford. But they were completely charmed, or conned, by Simon, to the point that they were putting pressure on me to marry him. I don’t want to give away the denouement but I escaped his clutches in the nick of time. I went to Oxford, he went to prison.

It was a story I always meant to write one day, but I thought it could wait till I was retired and my parents were dead. My parents always hated to be reminded of the Simon debacle — they felt even more betrayed by him than I did. But then my husband was diagnosed with myelofibrosis and told he had only two years to live unless he had a bone-marrow transplant. He was only 58, the same age as me, but suddenly death seemed just around the corner. I went up to my study and wrote the story in about two days flat. I have never written anything so easily before or since — it felt as though the story was already fully formed in my head and I just had to type it out.

I say story, and it felt like a story; I was writing it in a voice that was not quite my own. I think it was the voice of my 18-year-old self: there was an arrogance and sureness of tone the present me can only envy. How brilliant I thought I was then! I published the story in Granta magazine because I didn’t want my parents to see it and knew that Nunton, Wilts, where they lived, was a Granta-free zone. Soon afterwards my agent rang to say a film producer called Amanda Posey wanted to meet me with a view to optioning the story. It was the worst possible timing — my husband was in hospital having his bone-marrow transplant and I was virtually living there — but she said she would come to a nearby coffee bar any time I could get away. She came with her co-producer, Finola Dwyer. They seemed bright enough, but not remotely like my notion of film producers, which involved fat cigars and vicuña overcoats. Amanda asked if I wanted to write the film script myself and seemed delighted when I said no — she said she already had a screenwriter in mind. I thought she was mad and went back to the hospital and forgot about her. It was just one more weird incident in those weeks of constant weirdness that ended with my husband dying.

Among the many funeral bouquets was one “From Nick and Amanda”. Total blank. Some time later my agent explained that Amanda Posey was the girlfriend of Nick Hornby (she is now his wife), and he was the screenwriter she had in mind. He had spotted the story in Granta and showed it to Amanda, who showed it to Finola, who agreed it would make a good film. They kept batting names of possible screenwriters between them and Nick kept finding fault with them (“He was jealous!” says Amanda), till eventually he said: “Why don’t I do it?”

Nick seemed to know the characters way beyond what I’d said about them, and to intuit completely what it felt like to be a l6-year-old schoolgirl who was on the one hand very intelligent but on the other hand very ignorant about the world. He even seemed to understand my parents, which is more than I could ever say myself. He asked a lot about period detail: what posters I had on my bedroom wall, what music I listened to. For a ghastly moment I thought he might be planning a soundtrack full of l960s pop hits — that black hole compounded of Cliff Richard, Paul Anka, Liberace, Lonnie Donegan — but Nick said no, he wanted to know what I and my schoolmates really listened to. So I told him the truth: that we were far too pretentious to listen to pop. We listened to jazz at Eel Pie Island and collected records by French chansonniers like Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Juliette Gréco. He evidently took this on board, because it’s reflected in the soundtrack of the film.

I put a clause in the contract that I should have the right to see and comment on (but not alter) every draft Nick wrote. And there were so many drafts over the years — I think eight in all. He fleshed out characters who had been no more than names before and created whole scenes that were not in my story at all. He made me a cellist in the school orchestra and took me to an auction where I bid for a painting by Burne-Jones. He showed a positively eerie understanding of my father, giving him long rants (“Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know”) that are so exactly like the sort of things he might say in real life that

I still have to keep pinching myself to remember Nick Hornby has never actually met Dick Barber. The only bad thing he did was to change Simon’s name to David, which was my husband’s name, and I wish in retrospect I’d put up a fight. While Nick was working on the script, Finola and Amanda were looking for the money to make it. They also started talking to directors and enlisted Beeban Kidron. She was on board for a year and half, and helped Nick develop the script, then she had to jump off-board because she had a prior long-standing commitment to direct Richard Neville’s autobiography, Hippie Hippie Shake, co-scripted by her husband, Lee Hall.

(Big mistake — she made the Neville film but then withdrew her name from the credits.) Nick told me that when Beeban left he was ready to give up. But then Amanda and Finola found Lone Scherfig, and she was passionate about the script. Lone seemed an odd choice, given that she is Danish, but she proved to be exactly right.

Lucy Bevan, the casting director, had already started looking for an actress to play me. They knew it would have to be an unknown, because she was meant to be only 16, but they wanted someone with a bit of experience, and eventually found Carey Mulligan, who had done a memorable episode of Dr Who and played one of the Bennet sisters in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice. When Nick heard she was 22 he had a fit. “I thought they’d buggered it up because I couldn’t believe there was a 22-year-old girl in contemporary Britain who looks innocent in any way. But when I saw Carey’s screen test, I knew she was completely fine, and when I saw her in her school uniform, I thought, oh my God, she looks 14!”

Nick and Amanda asked their friend Emma Thompson to play my headmistress, and she agreed. In fact, she only appears on screen for about five minutes, but it cheered up the backers no end to have an Oscar-winning “name” on board. They were also pleased to have Peter Sarsgaard, who, though not a great box-office name, is universally admired in the industry. And Rosamund Pike clamoured to play the small part of Helen because “no one ever lets me be funny”.

The drafts of the script came and went; the film option was renewed for a second year, a third, a fourth. Occasionally, Amanda or Nick would get in touch and say that such and such an actor was interested, but it all had a comforting never-never feel as far as I was concerned. And then — shock horror! — in December 2007 they e-mailed to say they would start shooting in March. What? I went into complete meltdown. Until then I’d never actually believed that the film would be made (I had plenty of writer friends who’d sold film options without ever seeing a finished film). I thought my Granta story was just fine as it was; I didn’t want to see actors impersonating my parents and audiences criticising them. My parents by now were in their nineties and living in a retirement home. They wouldn’t actually see the film — my father is blind, and they hadn’t been near a cinema for at least 20 years — but they were bound to hear about it. I kept dithering about how to tell them, until my daughters briskly pointed out that my parents never listened to a word I said anyway. So we made a plan that we would take them out to lunch and at some point I would tell them about the film, and Rosie and Theo would be on standby to break a plate or something to distract them if they asked too many questions. I spent the whole lunch in a fever of nerves, but eventually chose my moment and said: “Someone is making a film about my life. About my teenage years, you know, when I went out with Simon?”

“Oh that’s nice,” they said. “We’ve got a new chiropodist. He’s very good.”

And so the moment passed.

Soon afterwards, the film started shooting in London. I heard all about it from my 18-year-old niece, Freya, who played a “featured extra” (so much better than an extra extra) in the crowd scenes and became a walking encyclopaedia on the progress of the film. She lived through the heartbreak when Orlando Bloom pulled out just a week before shooting began. He was meant to be playing Danny, the second male lead, and it was an incredible coup for Amanda and Finola to have got him, and the backers were thrilled.

“The deal was done, he’d had his medical, his security people were all sorted, his dog was about to be put on a plane from Los Angeles to London,” says Finola, “and then he started wobbling. I was on the phone to him all night.”

Then Nick got a call saying Bloom wanted to ring him about a couple of script changes. “He rang me and said how great he thought the script was and how much he liked my writing and he hoped we could work together on something else but it wouldn’t be this. I couldn’t understand how we’d got from a couple of script changes to this. So I rang Amanda and said, ‘He just told me he wasn’t doing it.’ And she said, ‘Well, what did you say to upset him?’ And I said, ‘Nothing.’ So Amanda rang Bloom’s agent, who said, ‘Oh, Nick’s just got the wrong end of the stick. I’ll get Orlando to ring again.’ So he gets on the phone again, and I’m in the kitchen with Amanda and before I can say a word, he starts, ‘As I was saying, it’s a great script and I wish I could do it but I can’t.’ Amanda could hear then that it wasn’t anything I’d said.”

Finola spent two hours on the phone to Bloom; his agent rang him, his manager, his fellow actors, but he was adamant. It remains a mystery why he dropped out; Finola thinks he just lost confidence. Anyway, he served a useful purpose in keeping the backers happy while they closed the deal.

The Bloom phone calls happened on a Tuesday and Wednesday; on Thursday Amanda and Finola decided, “Okay, we’ve got to move on.” They had already talked to Dominic Cooper (The History Boys, Mamma Mia!) long before Bloom came on board, and his agent, hearing rumours of Bloom’s defection, rang and said, “You know, Dominic still loves that part,” so they did a deal that same Thursday. And he is great in the part, so Orlando Bloom missed his chance, poor possum.

Shooting started in March 2008 and Amanda asked if I would like to watch. I said I wouldn’t mind watching one of the school scenes. (I couldn’t bear to watch the scenes with my parents, but school felt like neutral territory.)

So she said, come to the Japanese school in Acton on Tuesday. Driving over there, I thought: “Why would they set my school days in a Japanese school?” and suddenly realised that it was April Fools’ day. I almost turned back, but when I arrived, I saw it was the old Haberdasher Aske’s girls’ school that we used to play lacrosse against, and it felt completely right. There was only one surreal moment, when I opened a classroom door and found a group of Japanese teachers quietly marking papers.

Wandering round the school, I was absolutely gobsmacked at the care that had been taken to get all the props and period details right. There were school photos along the corridors that were so much like my old school photos I kept looking for myself in them. It smelt like my old school, it felt like my old school, and when the teacher handed essays back to the class, they were in those scuzzy orange exercise books we always used, and I felt that old tremor of anxiety in case I hadn’t got an A.

Andrew McAlpine, the production designer, told me that he and Lone decided to move the action forward a year to 1961, because Britain in 1960 looked exactly the same as Britain in the 1950s — ie, drab — whereas by 1961 there was some glimmer of style and colour on the streets. He also told me that he’d been to look at my old school, Lady Eleanor Holles, but it was unsuitable for filming because the geography didn’t work — they wanted a scene where the girls came streaming out onto the street, but LEH is set behind playing fields, far back from the road.

He also went to look at my old home in Twickenham (an Edwardian terraced house), but said the street had become too smart, and anyway he’d already decided he wanted to use mock-Tudor. Apparently, foreigners are always thrilled by mock-Tudor houses, because they seem uniquely English and quaint, like red London buses. He found a whole mock-Tudor enclave in Ealing, inhabited mainly by Poles, which was perfect for filming. He also found the red Bristol car that Peter Sarsgaard drives and said it would thrill petrolheads all round the world, “because it’s a truly seminal car. They’ll get excited just by the sound of the door shutting”. And he campaigned successfully to have one scene — where I meet Peter Rachman — set at Walthamstow dog track, simply because he wanted to film the place before it closed for ever. It seems odd that he, a New Zealander, and Lone Scherfig, a Dane, should have this tremendous affection for London, but it’s part of what gives the film its charm.

At one point when I was chatting to Amanda outside the school, I noticed a flock of ring-necked parakeets flying overhead and remarked casually: “Of course, that wouldn’t have happened in 1961. Parakeets are a very recent arrival.” Amanda looked aghast: I swear she was wondering whether they should have marksmen on the rooftops to pick off any incoming parakeets, and what would that do to their budget? But I don’t think there are any parakeets in the finished film.

All the film people at the school kept asking if I was excited to be meeting my 16-year-old self, and I had to keep biting my tongue and saying: “Yes, absolutely thrilled.” How daft would you have to be to believe that meeting an actress was the same as meeting your 16-year-old self? But actually I was thrilled when I saw Carey Mulligan playing one of the classroom scenes. I knew she was pretty, but you have to believe that she is enough of a swot to get into Oxford. Anyway, she was perfect, with a sort of tremulous earnestness that reminded me of myself at that age. When she finished the scene, a film publicist brought her over to meet me and insisted that a cameraman record this deeply meaningful encounter “for the DVD”. I think I was meant to burst into tears and hug her or something, but instead I shook hands and said “Well done”, and she said “Thank you”, and we both smiled for the camera. The publicist was disappointed.

Weeks passed. Amanda had told me that they hoped to release the film in March 2009, so I assumed I wouldn’t hear any more till then. But in August I got an e-mail from Finola saying they were having a private screening of the rough cut in Soho that week if I wanted to come. Of course I wanted to come. I went with trepidation but was then absolutely thrilled. The film is a masterpiece!

Seriously. The film has now moved so far from my own life that I don’t really recognise any of it. Alfred Molina as my father is positively heart-rending. Peter Sarsgaard is handsome and sympathetic and only faintly a conman. Even the suburban streets look idyllic. What was once a dark, shameful memory has become sunlit and glamorous thanks to the magic of Nick Hornby, Lone Sherfig and all. The film had its first public showing at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the audience prize. Distribution rights have been sold to practically every country in the world — Greece and Turkey were the last to go — so people in Bangkok, in Bahrain, in Budapest will be watching my Twickenham childhood. How weird is that?

An Education

An Education is Duddy Kravitz in Twickenham, located in novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy, Fever Pitch) domain – an unsentimental coming-of-age comedy - droll, insightful, subversive. It involves upper-lip British restraint, an unreliable storyteller, a cast of characters acting out their sinister ulterior motives. And, as in all Nick Hornby works, at the centre of this tale, is another aimless obsessive male Hornby doofus.

Three themes braid together – an insouciant British smartiepants falls for a cringe-inducing predatory smoothie, old enough to be her dad. At 16, Jenny’s impatient to be all grown up – she wants to smoke, to have a drink, to see Paris - not just singalong with Juliette Greco in her bedroom. Ok, we've known since precocious Cleopatra that teenieboopers suffer from excessive sexual repression, from Daddy-Love. They ache for sex with older guys. And the feeling has always been mutual: besotted geezers involved in over-the-top, socially unacceptable passions with females young enough to be their daughters (Polanski, Letterman). Indeed, Woody (what a nickname) Allen's oeuvre has been one long elegy to this theme since he took nude photographs of Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Ti Previn. And then took up with her.

But wait a second! In An Education, not only does Miss Smartie Pants act of her own volition, she enters into this nascent relationship knowing exactly what she's in it for. She’s making her own declaration of independence. She’s determining her own age of consent, not her parents, nor her teacher nor prissy England. Indeed, she wields more power than her lothario. As a consequence, we, the audience are wedged into the rift between public perception and private truth, voyeurs to one of those can’t-look-away, can’t-bear-to-watch relationships.

The villain of the piece is a Lothario with a don't-mess-with-the-Jews approach to Twickenham. A Duddy Kravitz charmer, he's sleazy in morally ambiguous ways we don't wish him to be: his felonious infectious logic seducing not only the schoolgirl, her parents, his own circle of friends, he's out to seduce us, the audience as well. And he does. It’s not hard imagining a lifetime of betrayals he has absorbed. We don't want him behaving the way he does. Since he's too likeable, too abounding in charms. He fingers Sir Edward Elgar (Land of Hope and Glory) as an antisemite. Then blithely squires his young thing off to some home-schooling of his own devising: an Elgar concert.

The third Theme - bedroom suburb Twickenham (on the Thames, an hour southwest of London) is a smirky villain in its own right: sexist, straight-laced, anti-Semitic, with an enough about you, what about me self-adoration. This is a bombastic Britannia, just before the Pill, before bra burning, before flower power. Carnaby Street, the Beatles and the Stones, Mary Quant, miniskirts and hot pants have not yet arrived. But all are just round the corner.

As in the best of British films, An Education’s casting has a galaxy of stars. Carey Mulligan is suitably adorable, but American actor, Peter Sarsgaard, in the Iago role, steals the movie. Alfred Molina (Chocolat, Frida) plays the father; Emma Thompson (Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility) the starchy headmistress, and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake), fresh from her Oscar nomination, has a walk-on.

This one will definitely be round, come Oscartime. Don't miss it.

****

An Education est du même romancier, Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy, Fever Pitch). Une comédie traitant de la période d’adolescence vers celle de l’adulte, drôle, perspicace, subversive. C’est une histoire invraisemblable qui retient les émotions, où chacun y joue un rôle basé sur des motifs ultérieurs inquiétants. Et au sein de chaque histoire, se retrouve l’acteur principal, personnage obsessif et sans but précis.

Trois thèmes s’y entrecroisent – une adolescente quelque peu gaga mais très astucieuse a le béguin pour un enjôleur du double de son âge. Désire se comporter en grande fille – fumer, prendre un verre, voir Paris – et pas seulement chantonner à la Juliette Greco – elle cherche un homme assez vieux qu’il pourrait être son père. Oui, on est d’accord que depuis les temps de la précoce Cléopâtre, les adolescentes souffrent du complexe d’Œdipe. Ils convoitent le sexe avec des hommes plus âgés. Les preuves abondent en ce sens récemment dans les manchettes de journaux de ces cas de passion avec des jeunes femmes pouvant avoir été leur propre fille (Polanski, Letterman). En effet, l’œuvre de Woody Allen fut l’objet d’une longue complainte depuis qu’il a pris des photos de nue de la fille adoptive de Mia Farrow, Soon-Ti Previn, avec laquelle il a ensuite poursuivi une relation.

Mais un instant ! Dans An Education, non seulement Mlle Gaga vole-t-elle de ses propres ailes mais elle entre dans une relation embryonnaire tout en sachant exactement ce qu’elle désire. Elle décide elle-même l’âge de sa majorité et non pas ses parents, ni son professeur ni l’époque de l’ère victorienne d’Angleterre. En effet, elle a plus de pouvoir que son Lothario de séducteur. À quoi pense-t-elle ? à un apprentissage tacite – à la science infuse. Sommes-nous pris entre la perception du public et nos propres croyances ? Ce sont des films de style impossible à ne pas regarder - intolérable à regarder.

Maintenant, il y a les motifs d’antisémitisme britannique. Notre Lothario séducteur est un juif. Il nous l’avoue dès la première rencontre. Il cite le personnage de Sir Edward Elgar (Land of Hope and Glory), musicien compositeur bien-pensant aux idées conservatrices. Puis tout en changeant de propos, il nous amène sur celui de sa propre invention : un concert Elgar. Il parle d’antisémitisme britannique, sans l’ombre d’une émotion. Et puis, c’est un charmeur à la Duddy Kravitz, lequel fut un frauduleux investisseur. Il est méprisable comme on ne voudrait pas qu’il le soit. Il ne veut pas seulement la séduire, mais aussi ses parents, son cercle d’amis, et il est là pour nous séduire, l’auditoire aussi. Et il réussit. C’est un vilain voyou qui comprend que le pompeux impérialisme tombera bientôt aux mains de l’Angleterre. Son comportement nous déplaît. Parce qu’il est trop aimable et charmant et qu’il est Juif. Il ne peut donc pas être une personne anti-sociale, nourrie par sa vengeance à l’idée de ne pas trop se mêler aux Juifs.

Le troisième sujet, chambre banlieusarde à Twickenham (sur la Tamise, à une heure au sud-ouest de Londres) se trouve un personnage suffisant, homogène, droit, anti-sémite sûr de lui. Une attitude où domine les mots assez de toi, parlons donc de moi. On est dans la période d’avant la pilule contraceptive, l’abandon du soutien-gorge, le flower power. Les habitants de Twickenham tiennent mordicus à leurs opinions personnelles parce qu’ils se sentent menacés. Rue Carnaby, les Beatles et les Stones, Mary Quant, les mini-jupes et les hotpants n’ont pas encore fait leur apparition en Angleterre. Mais c’est juste autour du coin de la rue. Une vie sur mesure à Twickenham.

Tout comme dans les meilleurs films de Grande-Bretagne, la distribution d’An Education est une galaxie d’étoiles. L’acteur américain, Peteer Sarsgaard, dans le rôle d’Iago, vole la vedette. Alfred Molina (Chocolat, Frida) incarne le rôle du père, Emma Thompson (Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility), la directrice en chef et Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Vera Drake), fraîchement nominée aux Oscars, y est figurante.

Celui-ci sera définitivement dans la ronde aux Oscars.


Bon cinéma,
***
John Easterbrooke provided a fascinating link to anyone wanting to know how movies get written:

The following is a link from Script Magazine. It is an interview with Nick Hornby the author and producer of An Education. I though you might find it insightful. Perhaps this link could be posted for other in the group, if you do not think it too late.

http://www.scriptmag.com/interviews/nick-hornby.html