I Am Not Afraid of Life

Colour, 35 mm
France, Switzerland, 1999, 111 min
Section: Visions of Seven - Youth through the Eyes of French Filmmakers

Synopsis

The girls whose adolescent years we follow in this film have been friends since childhood. The camera accompanies them over a period of several years so that the pubertal young girls could be played by the same actresses who played them as youngsters. Even back then, it was clear that not all of them had a problem-free family environment which would prepare them for their life ahead. At school they also encounter conflicts and failure, the battle to establish themselves, their fear of maturity. Add to all this their awkwardness during their first experiences with men, and they feel that they simply can’t handle life. They respond differently to these pressures, from aggression and forced gestures of defiance to resignation. The film is composed as a free mosaic of episodes, often stylised as a musical, which, when pieced together, create not only portraits of the four heroines, but also an image of the end of the rough 1970s, when the virtues of the lycée girls no longer reflected demure behaviour and prescribed obedience.

About the director

Noémie Lvovsky (b. 1964, Paris) studied screenwriting at FEMIS during the latter half of the 1980s. She states herself that she was sceptical of film until she came across Truffaut’s work, in particular, his Doinel cycle. She began her film career with short films; Oublie-moi (1994) is her feature debut. She then directed two feature-length films, I Am Not Afraid of Life (1999) and Les sentiments (2002), for which she received the Louis Delluc award in France. She also works in television and is a fine actress, appearing, for example, in the films of Arnaud Desplechin and Claude Berri. She has written for Desplechin (La vie des morts, 1990) and Philippe Garrel (Le coeur fantôme, 1996); screenwriting assumes an important position in her filmography.