Archive of films Wild Reeds / Les roseaux sauvages

France
1993, 110 min

Section: Visions of Seven - Youth through the Eyes of French Filmmakers
Year: 2006

A film about growing up, set in France at the beginning of the 1960s. The country is at war with Algeria which brings private anxiety and emotional confusion, heightened by the tense social atmosphere.

Synopsis

The story, set in a small town in south-west France, returns to the beginning of the 1960s, when the country is at war with Algeria. This fact is not simply an external detail, but it penetrates and aggravates the lives and relationships of the local lycée pupils. Serge is ashamed of his brother who tries to avoid being called up for the war; Henri, on the other hand, is strongly against Algerian independence since his parents live there as French settlers; Maité is the daughter of a Communist teacher who condemns French colonial policy as a matter of principle. François, who is in the same class as Serge and Henri, is also affected by the atmosphere of tension, conflicting views and mutual animosity. All this only heightens his adolescent confusion and his insecurity, which turns him away from the good-natured Maité and, for a time, throws him into the homosexual embrace of the virile, assertive Serge. The film is appealing for its convincing character studies of adolescent young people, who face a serious social crisis at a most sensitive time in their lives.

About the director

André Téchiné (b. 1943, Valence d’Agen), a director who has made almost twenty films, studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. He wrote for Cahiers du cinéma from the early 1960s and taught at the IDHEC in Paris from 1973. He already showed talent for psychological narration in his debut Paulina Is Leaving (1969), focused on heroes in conflicting and crisis situations. Téchiné also has a sense for the suggestive evocation of period atmosphere, whether his depiction is set in the past, as in the film The Brontë Sisters (1979), or in the family chronicle from the years 1930–60, reflecting the marked social upheavals of this era, French Provincial (1975), or in the present, e.g. in the film Hotel America (1981) and Don’t Kiss (1991) a raw tale of a young man from the provinces who faces tough experiences after his arrival in Paris. This film was screened in competition at the KV IFF in 1992.

Contacts

Connaissance du cinéma
122 rue La Boétie, 750 08, Paris
France
Tel: +33 1 435 901 01
Fax: +33 1 435 964 41
E-mail: [email protected]

About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Visions of Seven - Youth through the Eyes of French Filmmakers

Director:	André Téchiné
Screenplay:	André Téchiné, Gilles Taurand, Olivier Massart
Dir. of Photography:	Jeanne Lapoirie
Editor:	Martine Giordano
Producer:	Alain Sarde, Georges Benayoun
Production:	Les Films Alain Sarde, IMA Films
Cast:	Élodie Bouchez, Gaël Morel, Stéphane Rideau, Frédéric Gorny
Contact:	Connaissance du cinéma