Berlin Film Review: Being Seventeen

Being 17 is simultaneously lovely and terrifying. On the one hand, it is the time most people will encounter such wonders as sex and alcohol, but the downside to this is the inability to deal with it in a rational way. Everything is more exciting in its freshness, but everything hurts more because it’s the first time. George Eliot was correct when she wrote, “If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.” Being Seventeen captures this dichotomy with remarkably clarity, taking its sweet time to portray two boys coming to terms with growing up, and the wise elders who accompany that transition.

Both Thomas (Corentin Fila) and Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) are loners. In an early scene, they are the last to be picked for the basketball team, a choice (I speak from experience) which is rarely based upon sporting excellence. Thomas works on a farm with his adopted parents, and Damien lives in the town with his mother (Sandrine Kiberlain) – his father is away on war duty. They hate each other, irrationally, and are constantly fighting at school. It takes Thomas’ mother – the stand out role in the film – to bring a certain feminine influence to the boys’ lives; making them learn to see through their differences.

Despite the film being predictable in the end, the road it takes to get there, with great care taken for sculpting each individual character, makes it an incredibly satisfying cinematic experience

When Thomas has to move house – as it is closer to school and the hospital where his mother is – the boys have to face the real reasons why they fight all the time. The result is a fantastic meditation on masculinity, societal structures, and youth.

Anyone who has seen similar films on this subject, will see where this is going from the beginning. If you don’t, I won’t ruin it here, but if you read the signals, it becomes pretty obvious. Despite the film being predictable in the end, the road it takes to get there, with great care taken for sculpting each individual character, makes it an incredibly satisfying cinematic experience.

The moral and emotional lessons learnt in this film don’t come at the expense of cliché or sentimentality

Constantly aware of the passing of time, André Téchiné uses the passing of the seasons to excellent effect. We first see Thomas as he is trudging through the snow from his farm to the bus stop. The round trip, we are told, takes an hour and a half. The film then elegantly segues into the spring and the summer, as the boys hearts soften and they learn to respect one another. Again it’s an obvious use of pathetic fallacy, but it isn’t insisted upon with obvious establishing shots.

The film feels longer than it is, because it truly sinks into these lives and prefers observation and light humour over heavy-handed plot markers. The moral and emotional lessons learnt in this film don’t come at the expense of cliché or sentimentality. Instead they are hard earned and come about as a natural result of the plot and the characters.

What makes it so refreshing is that by the end they are still incomplete persons. After all, they are only seventeen, and still have so much to learn about life and romance. Yet by the end, they reach a form of serenity, which is just what they deserve.

Director: Andre Techine

Cast: Sandrine Kiberlain, Kacey Mottet Klein, Corentin Fila, Alexis Loret, Jean Fornerod, Mama Prassinos, Jean Corso.

Running time: 114 MIN

Country: France