--------------------- Les roseaux sauvages --------------------- (France 1994)
German title: "Wilde Herzen" American title: "Wild Reeds"
Directed by André Téchiné; With Gaël Morel, Elodie Bouchez, Frédéric Gorny, Stéphane Rideau, Michèle Moretti
**** out of **** (A MASTERPIECE)
I want to start at the end. The camera seems to have lost its orientation. It rotates, seeking young people whose search of their place in life was described in the film. Maybe some spectators are looking for orientation in their lives too, and possibly the film could help them.
The scene of André Téchiné's convincing, award-winning autobiographic drama "Les roseaux sauvages" is laid in the France of 1962, short before the end of the Algerian War. France had already consented to Algeria's independence under an agreement, but this peace treaty was combatted by the OAS, a nationalist organization of French living in Algeria.
The main characters in the film are four boarders. François (Gaël Morel) and Maité (Elodie Bouchez), the daughter of the French mistress Mme. Alvarez (Michèle Moretti), love each other, but on a purely spiritual level. More and more François perceives a homosexual inclination in himself. He falls in love for his class-mate Serge (Stéphane Rideau). But the latter doesn't reciprocate his love. They sleep with each other only once. Serge is heterosexual and feels attracted by Maité, but she feels reservations against him. In a noteworthy scene at a party François confesses Maité that he slept with a boy, but she explains François that this doesn't alter her love to him. At the beginning of the film François, Maité and Mme. Alvarez are guests at the wedding of Serge's brother, who was a pupil of Mme. Alvarez in former times and who is now a French soldier in Algeria. Serge's brother asks Mme. Alvarez, a communist, to hide him, because he doesn't want to return to Algeria. But she refuses. Later Serge's brother falls a victim to an assassination committed by the OAS. Serge angrily leaves the funeral. François induces Maité to follow Serge in order to console him. François wishes that these two people he loves shall love each other as well. Mme. Alvarez has a breakdown caused by a sense of guilt. Serge for the present looks upon the newcomer Henri (Frédéric Gorny) as an enemy, because Henri is an Algerian-French adherent of the OAS. Mme. Alvarez and Maité also feel reservations against Henri, and somehow so does François. But nevertheless François feels also attracted by Henri in some way, what entails discussions with Maité ...
One theme of "Les roseaux sauvages" is tolerance. This is also verbally expressed, when François reads out Jean de La Fontaine's fable "Le chêne et le roseau" in a French lesson. You can find the tolerance motif in connection with the liaisons of the protagonists - as in the above-mentioned confession scene. And you can also find it in connection with their views of life and their political standpoints (for instance their attitudes towards the Algerian War), that are different because of different origin and personal living circumstances. The film shows impressively, that political disagreements needn't be an insurmountable barrier on the way of friendship or love, but can be overcome by mutual respect and interest in the thoughts, feelings and living circumstances of the other person. That becomes especially clear in the presentation of the relation between Maité and Henri.
But Téchiné's film is not a pure discourse on tolerance. "Les roseaux sauvages" deals sensitively and believably with the relations, problems, yearnings, fears and views of life of its young protagonists in a time of political and personal transition. It narrates of their search of political, social, sexual and human orientation. Téchiné found fascinating images for that. He succeeded in making an important, extraordinarily multi-layered film that gets along without sentimentality or big effects. Téchine's direction is outstanding. And the young leads impress by very fine performances. Elodie Bouchez in the role of Maité is especially riveting.
In the above-mentioned final scene the camera finds the teenagers. They're crossing a bridge. In their search of the right way in this difficult time they have found a bit orientation.
"Les roseaux sauvages" is a masterpiece, a much better movie than Téchiné's average, rather banal "Rendez-vous" (1985) and his watchable, but uneven "Le lieu du crime" ("Scene of the Crime", 1986).
Excellent films like "Les roseaux sauvages" and Jacques Doillon's "Le petit criminel" (1990), which in a very different context also treats young people's search of stability and love, got me to pay more attention to French cinema.
(C) Karl Rackwitz (Germany, 1998)
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