Sebastien Lifshitz directed this French drama, winner of the 1998 Prix Jean Vigo. Born to a North African father and a French mother, 18-year-old Parisian high school senior Remi (Yasmine Belmadi) works part-time in an Arab grocery store while studying management and commerce. He responds to a school ad seeking subjects for a film, and Marc (Pierre-Loup Rajot), who placed the ad, auditions Remi by filming an interview with him. Marc, takes a shine to him and wastes no time luring him into bed. This experience unsettles Rémi and he begins to have various sexual adventures – with a guy (Lifshitz) in a men’s room and with a young woman (Margot Abascal) who grabs him while she’s dancing in the street. Sebastien Lifshitz arrives to tell the complexity of the world, people, and situations; we plunge through his film as a spectator, in its fragile fragment.
Two years before making his acclaimed gay-themed drama Presque rien (2000), Sébastien Lifshitz made this equally compelling coming-of-age short film. The way in which the film is shot and edited very cleverly captures the confusion in the mind of its protagonist as he makes the uncomfortable transition from childhood to adulthood. Like Presque rien, it’s a very intense, brooding film, with a striking sense of realism. Actor Malik Zidi makes his first screen appearance (in a minor role), a few years before director François Ozon made him famous with his dark sex comedy Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (2000). –NY Times
