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Being 17 Movie Review

Being 17 is a 2016 French drama film directed by Andre Techine and starring Kacey Mottet Klein and Corentin Fila. It’s a movie that started off great, but ended in an inferior manner.

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“What is there to say?“

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When his mother takes in a bully whose own mother is ill, the son of a soldier must learn to live with the boy who terrorized him. The great Celine Sciamma co-wrote this movie and I would surmise that she did not write the third act. There is no chance at all that she would write such a clunky conclusion.

That section of an otherwise very good movie really bothered me. For a film that is naturalistic and subtle to suddenly go into overtly melodramatic territory with the death of the father was not only unlikely, but also unnecessary as it shifted the focus from the boys to the mother way too heavily. It was moving, yes, but simply clunky in execution.

The rest of the film fares much better. Klein and Fila performed their characters so well and you can really sense the electric chemistry between the two. It is obvious from the start that the two are actually into each other and that is why they are fighting all the time. Exploring the close connection between bullying and sexual attraction, the script is at first very sophisticated at acknowledging that through immensely nuanced, minimalist dialogue.

That is another reason why the third act did not work as it also featured too much dialogue that was also on-the-nose and not subtle at all. I’ve just had the feeling watching this section that they did not know how to end the movie, so they threw some unnecessary melodrama that had very little reason to exist.

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Being 17 is fascinating in its French Pyrenees setting, a location rarely depicted in movies. That made it more unique. The harshness of the environment clashed against the turbulence of their growing up really well. The roles of the adults in all of their drama were rather unrealistic, but everything that happened between the two boys was so well written and quite complex.

The great Celine Sciamma was a co-writer on Being 17, but she couldn’t have written the third act of this movie as it was very chaotic in its introduction of unnecessary melodrama. The film was so interesting before that that the conclusion felt rushed and frustrating. Still, this is a sophisticated French coming-of-age tale about sexual awakening that is powerfully nuanced in its minimalist dialogue and complex character dynamics.

My Rating – 3.5