Screened as part of NZIFF 2016

Being 17 2016

Quand on a 17 ans

Directed by André Téchiné

An attentive mother (Sandrine Kiberlain) intervenes unwittingly in her son’s passionate feud with another boy in this intimate, engrossing and original coming-of-age drama set in the spectacular Pyrenees.

France In French with English subtitles
114 minutes DCP

Director

Producers

Olivier Delbosc
,
Marc Missonnier

Screenplay

André Téchiné
,
Céline Sciamma

Photography

Julien Hirsch

Editor

Albertine Lastera

Production designer

Olivier Radot

Costume designer

Christian Gasc

Music

Alexis Rault

With

Sandrine Kiberlain (Marianne)
,
Kacey Mottet Klein (Damien)
,
Corentin Fila (Tom)
,
Alexis Loret (Nathan)
,
Jean Fornerod (Jacques)
,
Mama Prassinos (Christine)
,
Jean Corso (Paulo)

Festivals

Berlin 2016

Elsewhere

André Téchiné’s engrossing and original drama of teenage male turmoil is enriched immeasurably by its assured inclusion of female perspective, thanks to a script co-written by Céline Sciamma (Girlhood, NZIFF15) and an inspired performance from Sandrine Kiberlain. In her most substantial role in years, Kiberlain plays a mother who unwittingly comes between her son (a mercurial Kacey Mottet Klein) and the classmate who embodies everything he thinks he loathes.

High in the spectacular Pyrenees, Marianne (Kiberlain), the local doctor, is called out to an isolated farm to tend to an ailing woman. She takes an instant liking to Thomas (Corentin Fila), her patient’s adopted son, a handsome young North African whose easy masculine competence impresses her. When the boy’s mother is admitted to hospital, Marianne invites Thomas to stay in town, near the hospital, with her and her son, his tauntingly brainy classmate Damien. She’s unaware of the longstanding antagonism between the two. Soon she is confronting the most outrageous flare-ups, and trying to unpick the insecurities that fuel their passionate hostility.

“As a portrait of adolescents wrestling with unfamiliar emotions, this is an uncommonly moving teen film, conveying with great restraint the boys’ loneliness, fear, longing and magnetic attraction in moments so tender and private you almost feel like an intruder… Kiberlain manages the tricky feat of making the perfect mother unquestionably real and relatable. Her performance can’t be over-praised.” — David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter