Canada/France/Switzerland 1998 95mins
Directed by Lea Pool
Screened at the 46th Sydney Film Festival
The coming of age flick is always a dangerous proposition, even in elegant Gallic mittens. Set Me Free travels a very tired path, a predictable purple patch with the usual art touches that should please patrons and help us distinguish between French teenage angst and all other international variations. In most teen pics, the always negative father is usually a drunkard or a compulsive gambler/womaniser. This time around it's a man who quotes Rilke at the deli (oh stop it dad!) and makes the wife stay up all night typing out his poems. Plus the usual punching bag moments and rebellious children. Some foreign colour. Charming indeed. Good for the garden.
It's a very typical film, with no real surprises or moments of originality, yet it offers small delights we can savour while the larger machine huffs and puffs away. For example, when the two girls meet for the first time and begin to kiss, there is a slowness and delicacy to their movements that is so gentle it goes against the standard representation of teenagers in the cinema (ie. Larry Clark). Here is a juvenile sexuality that is frail and supportive rather than ravenous and destructive. While this delicacy is fitting here, it works against the rest of the film. The movie just glides away, incredibly inert for a movie about supposed turbulent development. When the director wants the audience to feel the burden of the main character she has her jump into water and then indulges in a little slo-mo. This is just cliched, and a steal for The Piano anyway.
What is interesting is how Pool uses Godard's Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) in her own film in an attempt at expressing the anxiety of influence present in French Cinema. The young girl sees the beautiful Anna Karina one rainy afternoon and is immediately under her spell, forcing herself into a life of pure responsibility. I move my hand...I am responsible. I turn left...I am responsible. Nana, an emblem of confusion, becomes the role model for a new generation of confused French girls. From Falconetti's Joan of Arc to Karina's Nana to...this film. Set Me Free fails to match its predecessors; how could it possibly compare? The film is weakened every time a segment of Vivre Sa Vie is shown, for it only reminds you of its superiority. See you at the video store folks.
adam rivett
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goto adam's review of larry clark's film, Another Day in Paradise
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