Kung Fu Master 1988 Jane Birkin, The magic of teenage girls is a well worn subject in the realm of art but the magic of teen boys is much less covered.
This is likely because teenage boys aren’t magical. Still, that doesn’t stop Varda from making this the center of her film. Mary-Jane (Jane Birkin) develops an attraction to her daughter’s classmate Julien (Mathieu Demy) in spite of the 25 year gap...REPORTED
There’s been enough cases of female teachers going for their teenaged male students so I guess this is plausible enough, though like I said, I see nothing magical about teenage boys and I’m not sure the film really bothers to set Julien up as a character that would particularly appeal to Mary-Jane (less so than in Breillat’s Brief Crossing anyway).
Birkin’s real life daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon play Mary-Jane’s daughters Lucy and Lou which. Considering Varda’s own son is playing Julien, the film could be accused of a bit of stunt casting, keeping things all in the family.
But there is a naturalism in playing off a natural relationship (Maggie and Jake G in Donnie Darko comes to mind). I’ve no complaints in the general feel of the film. Varda is a skilled filmmaker and there are a lot of clever shots and cuts that caught my notice here and I never felt any desire to tune out.
Still, there was something kind of tame and uninspired in the story. It didn’t really go anywhere that made it really stand out as a film. The resolution of the story has some interest to it but it never really hits what could be called a climax. Merely competent is about all I can say.
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