Presented in official selection at the most recent Venice Film Festival, from which it walked away with the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Newcomer for Paul Kircher, theadaptation by brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma of the book Leurs Enfants après Eux by Nicolas Mathieu (Prix Goncourt 2018) is due to hit French cinemas on December 4, 2024.
August 92 in Heillange (the fictional counterpart of Hayange in Moselle), a valley lost in the East, rusting blast furnaces in the distance that no longer burn, a mining town. Fourteen-year-old Anthony(Paul Kircher) is bored stiff. One hot afternoon by the lake, he meets Stéphanie(Angelina Woreth). It's love at first sight, and that very evening he secretly borrows his father's(Gilles Lellouche) motorcycle to go to a party where he hopes to find her. The next morning, when he realizes that the motorcycle has disappeared, his life is turned upside down.
From 1992 to 1998, the film, which is cut into two-year chunks like the novel, follows Anthony's life; and like the chapters in Nicolas Mathieu's book, it also features period music (Modern Talking, Boney M, Metallica, NTM, our national Johnny). All in all, the Boukherma brothers have produced a successful but cautious adaptation, with no real flights of fancy or directorial sparkle.
The film explores the universal themes of adolescence, first loves that stretch over years, and the quest for identity - or how to escape from one's background - and is therefore not unlike another film in theaters, Gilles Lellouche's L'Amour Ouf. The French actor and director also wanted to bring the Goncourt adaptation to the screen, but decided instead to concentrate on adapting Neville Thompson's book. And like Lellouche's film, Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma's feature struggles to touch the heart.
The filmmaking duo still manage to turn their film into a retro treat that can be enjoyed for two hours thanks to a meticulous reconstruction, its languor capturing the long vacation time and the boredom of regional youth. But his cast of actors struggles to endear themselves to us, with the exception of Lellouche and his granular, embossed character of Anthony's father, a notorious alcoholic but not a bad guy, and Paul Kircher, definitely one of the actors of his generation to keep an eye on.
It's also a pity that the two directors didn't find the time to give greater prominence, in the course of the film's 2 hours 15 minutes, to the economic context of this French region sacrificed on the altar of globalization - a central theme in Nicolas Mathieu's work.
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