Les Roseaux Sauvages (1993) aka Wild Reeds

Summary:

A story of 1960's France and the 'coming of age' of a group of young people.

Francois is struggling with his blossoming homosexuality and how he feels about his friend, Serge. Serge is facing the heartache of losing his brother in the fighting with Algeria and suddenly becoming the heir to his family farm, with all the responsibility that brings.

Maitre is a young woman with a fear and distrust of boys, but she becomes friends with Francois, who is unthreatening to her because of his lack of physical interest in her, but she soon becomes attracted to the young Algerian student Henri, who has his own troubles.

Review:

Steeped in political metaphor, this movie is slightly hard going in places, but the ultimate message is much the same as many coming of age movies, that growing up is always hard to do and accepting your sexuality can be confusing and frightening.

The leads are all nice to look at and the emotion appears genuine. Like many French movies it can be a little 'arty' in places and you occasionally think that there was a deliberate break while the director shot some nice scenery and popped on the soft focus for the tourist board, but it's in no way a bad movie. It has charm and warmth coupled with skillful directing and beautiful photography.

My main gripe is the subtitling, basically it's crap. My French isn't good enough to follow the dialogue alone all the way through, but even *I* know that some of the subtitling wasn't correct!

A nice movie if you're looking for something a little deeper and more meaningful that just a bit of 'fluff'!