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ROME 2012 Alice in the City

Youth, a melancholic farewell to a father

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- The debut feature film for Justine Malle, daughter of the deceased Louis Malle, was presented at Alice in the City

Justine Malle [to the left on the photo], daughter of deceased Louis – the French director behind world celebrated films such as The Silent World, an underwater documentary presented in Cannes (1955), and Au revoir les Enfants, which won the Gold Lion in Venice (1987) — is taking her first steps as director with Youth [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, presented on November 12, and part of this year’s Alice in the City competition, the youth section running= in parallel with the Rome festival.
The film tells the story of a determining moment in the director’s youth (source for the title): her passage into the world of adults, which also coincides with the last year of her father’s life (who died in 1995 from a lymphoma) and her first great love (a man who will later become her husband).

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In Youth, you cannot escape the autobiographical elements, even if some details have been changed. Juliette is the film’s protagonist, the father is called Pierre and the setting is in France, not California where Malle spent his last few years. Other than that, the illness, the circumstances, the words and emotions are all symptomatic of a particular father-daughter intimacy.

Juliette (played by Esther Garrel who also comes from artistic family [on the right in the photo]) is twenty and full of insecurities. Her father (Didier Bezace, in Cannes last year with L'Exercice de l'État [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pierre Schoeller
film profile
]
/The Minister) who lives in beautiful French countryside surroundings, is the only one to support and guide her. Her mother, a beautiful actress, lives with her in Paris.

Her father’s unexpected illness catches Juliette at a bad time: her philosophy studies are not going well and things aren’t much better with the man with whom she is in love. Hippy chic Benjamin is not interested in any emotional complications.

The health conditions of the person she loves the most in the world quickly get worse, as she is assailed by exams and feelings she has never had before. Forced to face the inevitable end, Juliette has to deal with change, which will force her to face up to life in a completely new way.

Youth comes from the obvious need to share a personal story, but the excessive pull-back of memories make it difficult to touch on more universal feelings, thereby limiting spectators’ empathy. Personal references are often poorly hidden, (the video the girl watches is from Phantom India, a well-known documentary series by Louis Malle), as are intellectual games (like the mirroring of Justine and Juliette, two Sade anti-heroins). The overall style is more interesting though: classic and without surprises, but laden with delicate melancholy.

The film was produced by Tupelo Films.

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(Translated from Italian)

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