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Emmanuelle Bercot’s sophomore film is the story of Malony (Rod Paradot), a teenager prone to crime, and the justice system which only wants the best for him.
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Éva Husson’s Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) finds a sweet romance in a tale of teenagers these days and their orgies. The film opens on a pubescents-gone-wild party in a small-town mansion in France. The camera pans around the room to reveal that couples are having sex in the open, people are sitting around naked, drugs are being done, and it’s total madness. We’re watching a “Bang Gang” event unfold — and yes, that’s what the kids actually call it in the film.
As designed to shock as Larry Clark’s Kids, Bang Gang features the same kind of horrifying graphic imagery, though more artfully shot. At least writer-director Husson gives reasonable motivation for why the sex party starts in Bang Gang. A rivalry between two female friends is sparked by the despicable Alex (Finnegan Oldfield), who uses the more conventionally desirable George (Marilyn Lima) to work his way to the one he actually likes, Laetitia (Daisy Broom). George retaliates against what she sees as Laetitia’s betrayal by starting an all-sex truth-or-dare game, minus the confessions, which becomes a local ritual of meaningless and careless sex: George’s attempt at taking control of the situation.
Meanwhile, she pines after Laetitia’s boy-next-door Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefèbre) who is occupied caring for his wheelchair-bound father. Sensing George’s interest in Gabriel, Laetitia toys with him by inviting him to one of the legendary “Bang Gang” events. There, this stranger to orgies and sex finds tenderness with George, and the modern love story is born. Husson is hardly the first to remark that that millennials often suffer from commitment-phobia, which can lead to this kind of careless behaviour. As in Kids, you can bet the film will become a cautionary tale. It can’t end without an abortion and a bit of syph.
But Bang Gang doesn’t contribute much to the indictment Clark started twenty years ago. Why, for example, is Alex such an object of desire? He seems a careless lover and a cruel one, at that. Why would the otherwise sensible Laetitia only inquire about why they’re not using a condom after intercourse has begun? If competition and jealousy is what fuels the girls’ actions, why does Husson drop the thread of George and Laetitia’s friendship by the third act? Why does Husson choose to focus instead on the sweet but intellectually vacant relationship between George and Gabriel? Perhaps most frustrating of all is how nobody seems to talk about anything interesting. If the Bang Gang springs from loneliness and insecurity, why don’t we see moments of vulnerability between any of the characters?
Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in its inaugural Platform section, a juried competition. Its international sales agent is Films Distribution. It has not yet been picked up for North American distribution. The film will also screen at the London Film Festival this month.
When Parisienne begins, we meet the beautiful Lina (Manal Issa), an eighteen-year-old freshman from Beirut, studying abroad in Paris. She’s eating dinner at her uncle’s house in the suburbs, the only connection to home she has in this strange country, when he attempts to rape her. She stops him, violently, before running out into the night in fear: penniless, possessionless, naive, and now homeless. By the end of the film, she’s become a sophisticated Parisienne, independent and strong-willed.
She depends on the kindness of strangers. When a girl in class loans her a pen on the first day of school, Lina swipes her purse, before thinking better of it: if she returns it, she might be able to get a place to sleep. She’s unable to tell anyone what happened to her to put her in such a desperate situation, because she knows her family won’t understand, and she’s worried her peers won’t either. So she lies, which always comes back to bite her. Paris is a foreign place with foreign customs, and even when people are nice to her, they often can’t help themselves from complaining about immigrants stealing their jobs. She faces racism, sexism, and xenophobia on an almost daily basis — as if adjusting to a new country where she doesn’t know anyone wasn’t hard enough.
In part because Lina is so stunningly beautiful, she spends much of her time in romantic entanglements: attracting men is easy; making friends proves challenging enough that she even hangs out with a skinhead. She starts an affair with a married man (Paul Hamy) that she knows from the start will end in heartbreak, but it still shocks her. It also makes her feel initiated into Parisian life, ready to embark on another relationship. This time, it’s with an age-appropriate waiter who is sweet and loving, but has a bad drug habit and works as a drug dealer. And finally, she falls for the son of her immigration lawyer (Vincent Lacoste of “Lolo”) — probably the best match of the bunch though she sometimes treats him like a placeholder.
Each romance allows Lina to explore a different part of her, from embracing her burgeoning sexuality to looking for tenderness to exploring her political views. There’s something almost rote the way writer-director Danielle Arbid’s screenplay is structured around these three affairs, rather than focusing perhaps on how her relationship with her art professor and thus her academic interests evolves. But that’s partly the point, because Lina is isolated and desperate to cling to anyone who can provide her safe harbour — mostly men.
Director Danielle Arbid uses lots of closeups to keep us in Lina’s headspace, intimately aware of her emotions. She also shoots a lot of handheld for a cinema verité effect. Though Issa is a terrific actress whose face contains multitudes, the technique grows tiresome. It’s sometimes claustrophobic, and there are times when we might benefit from a calm wide shot, allowing Lina to bask in what she loves about her new home, however alien it may be.
Parisienne had its world premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the Toronto International Film Festival.
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Andrew Cividino’s assured debut Sleeping Giant — the opening film at this year’s Cannes’ Critics Week — captures the beauty of cottage country Ontario without ever quite transcending the often stilted performances of its non-actors. The film follows Adam (Jackson Martin) who is up north with his family for the summer where he meets two trouble-making cousins, Riley (Reece Moffatt) and Nate (Nick Serino) who lack the privilege and education Adam enjoys. This sometimes makes it hard for them to connect with Adam, and it also makes them seem exotic to him. Riley is the more amicable of the two, and he easily befriends Adam, which makes his cousin Nate jealous. When Riley starts dating Adam’s childhood friend and then sees Adam’s father in a compromising position, Nate and Adam end up in a fight over Riley’s attention with dangerous consequences.
The film is rife with homoerotic tension, and there’s a real sense of foreboding: The boys are too young to really understand the implications of their daredevil games. Cividino creates some glorious montages of the landscapes set to a percussion-heavy score. Ultimately, though, the boys’ sometimes indecipherable trash talk and Cividino’s too often aimless shaky camera don’t quite add up. It’s a film grounded in place that never quite finds its footing in plot. Nevertheless, it does announce an exciting new Canadian talent behind the camera. I look forward to seeing what he does next.
‘Sleeping Giant’ screens Tues. Sept. 15 at 9 p.m. at Elgin/Winter Garden Theatres and Thurs. Sept. 17 at 9 p.m. at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Tickets and details can be found here.