18 Years Old and Rising
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Jb-Z4Jbck&w=500″]
Primo is an ordinary middle-class youngster studying for his baccalaureate, who gets side-tracked when he falls in love with a rich girl. They soon learn they have to deal with her condescending friends who look down upon this upstart.
IMDb – 6.1 | Rotten Tomatoes – N/A | Wikipedia (fr)
This movie is essentially a rom-com. Fans of the genre will definitely find it a really enjoyable flick. But I feel like even critics of the genre will find that the movie deserves more merit than it’s IMDb rating.
The movie is really good at how odd it is. There are plenty of well executed awkward moments and they hold the audience’s attention long enough to ignore the slightly flaky story line.
Director Fred Louf‘s portrayal of Parisian high society is extremely quirky and the social-political commentary adds a very interesting layer to the film.
The performances are all very believable, not that those characters would’ve been very hard to pull off. Pierre Niney, as Primo, delivers a strong performance as a love-struck eighteen year old who is still finding his way. My favourite character was the very odd Delphine, played by Audrey Bastien.
Where the film falls short is character development. I feel like it doesn’t realise it’s full potential by not delving further into the character’s lives. For example, there’s a short scene on Primo’s job, which looks very interesting, but we never find out what he exactly does.
All in all an enjoyable movie.
Heckler recommends this would make a great date movie.
Even if you don’t like the film, we reckon it’ll want to make you read Alfred de Musset’s play No Trifling With Love. Good luck finding a copy though. -Ed
