Director:
Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau Screenplay: Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau
Cast:
Etienne: Jimmy Tavares
Caroline: Ariane Ascaride
Laurent: Johnattan Zaccaï
The grandmother: Hélène Surgère
Ludovic: Lucas Bonnifait
Running time: 102 minutes Year of production: France - 2003 Rating: Not rated (some language) Gauge: 35mm, DVD (color)
Distributor: Wellspring Media
“Ma
vraie Vie à Rouen is an intimate film. It succeeds
in rendering great sensibility to the succession of moments
in Etienne’s life, thanks to a convincing equilibrium
between funny scenes and moving ones, as well as light
and balanced editing. Ducastel and Martineau also manage
to capture the essence of adolescence, and numerous viewers
will be able to identify themselves here and there.”
Olivier Pélisson | MonsieurCinema.com
Etienne lives
alone with his mother in Rouen. For his birthday he receives
a digital video camera and decides to film his close friends
and relatives, along with everything that happens in Rouen.
Clips of his mother eating and walking around the winter fair
are interwined with clips of firefighters, construction workers
and bystanders. Etienne’s best friend Ludovic is questionned
countless times on videotape about his dates and his virginity.
Etienne even turns the camera on himself while he practices
for an ice skating championship. My Life on Ice feels
like bits and pieces of film put together by a teenager, and
although unsettling at first - one feels like an intruder,
a voyeur - the process lends a fresh naturalism to this coming-of-age
tale. With long shots of cityscapes and landscapes, Olivier
Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Drôle de Félix)
leave plenty of space for their characters to mature.
