MAUVAISES FRÉQUENTATIONS
BAD COMPANY |
 |
Director:
Jean-Pierre Améris
Screenplay: Alain Layrac
Cast: Delphine: Maud Forget; Olivia: Lou Doillon; Laurent: Robinson
Stevenin; Alain: Maxime Mansion; Claire: Delphine Rich; René: François
Berléand; Mamie: Micheline Presle.
Running time: 98'
Year of production: 1999
Rating: Not rated (nudity, sex)
Gauge: 35mm (color)
Distributor: Menemsha Entertainment
|
|
“Aside
from keeping the film’s tone restrained and dispassionate no
matter how frenzied the film’s action becomes, director Améris
has helped his young actors deliver the kind of performances--especially
from protagonist Forget--that makes this story so devastating.”
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times. |
|
|
 |
|
Shy
and petite, 14-year-old Delphine, the only child of protective bourgeois
parents, chafes in the confines of her sheltered life. When the tall,
dreadlocked outsider, Olivia, joins her class at school she immediately
befriends her. The two go to a nightclub where Delphine meets and
falls hard for the shady but seductive Laurent. Laurent and his friend
dream of chucking in school and taking a permanent vacation in Jamaica.
They concoct a diabolic scheme to raise the money--providing the boys
at their school with blow-jobs--then try to enlist Delphine and Olivia
to do the work for them, promising in return to take them to Jamaica.
Madly, blindly in love, Delphine suddenly finds herself filled with
the strength and certainty of a martyr. She agrees to the plan; Olivia,
afraid for her friend, joins her in moral support. Based on an incident
reported in the French press, the film presents its shocking subject
in a straightforward, naturalistic fashion, without graphic depictions
of sex. Delphine’s sordid, misguided, emotionally devastating
adventure is never presented as saintly or transcendent. Rather, and
what is more disturbing, it is shown as the logical extreme of the
adolescent desire to push experiences, for better or worse, to the
bitter end.
|
|
|
| PHOTO Courtesy
of Menemsha Entertainment |
|
|
|
