The 80s was a fertile decade for teen films. Thousands of such movies were made and some of them have stood the test of time to be considered classics. The one that deserves this title the most, to my eyes, is La Boum.
I may be a little biased by giving this movie a perfect 10, but no other film has touched me so deeply and made me identify with the characters so much as this one.
It is the film that started my love for all things French, and so it deserves all the praise I'm going to give it.
The boum phenomenon - essentially a party in which teens danced shoulder to shoulder with Walkmans in their ears- was completely new in France when this film came out. Screenwriter Danièle Thompson got the inspiration for the story from a party that her daughter threw while she was at work. When she returned, the teens were still partying, and an idea was born.
The story revolves around a teenager girl, Victoire (shortened to Vic) Beretton. Moving from Versailles to Paris, she meets a new girl at school, Penélope, and creates a group of friends, each one with different characteristics. It's one of these friends that invites her to the famous boum, in which she meets Mathieu, her "great and only true love". Her parents, meanwhile, experience a crisis, when they start cheating on each other, and this leads the family on the verge of collapsing until a quite predictable but pleasing ending occurs.
The character of Vic, played by the debutante Sophie Marceau, was the one that left me the most lasting impression. She portrayed the average teenager of the time, one more concerned with her relationship than school, always with the Walkman or the telephone in the ears. This universality of the character was what made her an engaging protagonist; you could hate her, or love her, but you wanted to see how she would end up. What differentiated Sophie Marceau from the other teen actors of the film was her acting ability; she showed a mix of precociousness, maturity and childishness, the one moment complaining about not being fed (!) and the other helping her father cope with his separation from her mother.
Vic was a multifaceted personality, both selfish and caring, lovable and annoying. This comes in stark contrast to her friends, which were either only innocent children - especially Sheila O'Connor, who interpreted Penélope, what with her constant mannerisms and childish enthusiasm about everything- or unsympathetic teenagers, as exemplified by her lover's Mathieu's, behaviour.
Another performance which was amazing was the one of Denise Gray, who played Vic's great-grandmother, Poupette. At the time eighty-two years old, she had by far the best jokes in the film, most of them stemming from the contradiction of her age and her active personality. She gives her great-granddaughter advise on matters of love, goes on tour with an orchestra as a harpist, and generally has a good time, while Vic experiences the strange feeling of first love. Gray, who was a famous actress before "La Boum", was introduced to a new generation of viewers through this film, becoming a synonym for the loving grandmother.
The parents, Claude Brasseur and Brigitte Fossey, did an excellent job too. Brasseur had got a César for best actor for his role in the film "La guerre des polices" in 1979, paying an irritable, jealous police officer. Here, instead, he's calm, patient and understanding, although at times he gets on Vic's way, since he doesn't seem to understand his daughter's boum-craze. Fossey had risen to prominence as a child through René Clément's "Forbidden games" (1951), a critically acclaimed film about children's experience in World War Two France. In the role of Vic's mother, she is sweet and kind, having to cope with Vic's rants about everything imaginable. Dominique Lavanant and Bernard Giraudeau, the first one famous from the film "Les bronzés" (1978), the second to achieve bigger fame in the next years with "Les spécialistes" (1985), and "Le ruffian" (1983), also intepret their roles well, being the ones that lead to the marriage crisis of the Beretton couple.
Director Claude Pinoteau did an amazing job too. He had scored a previous success with "La gifle" (1974), starring Isabelle Adjani as the teen rebel. Being the one who discovered the young actors, he certainly had a good idea of what he wanted from them, and gave them good instructions to carry out their performances successfully. This is proven even more by the fact that when Sophie Marceau's co-stars tried their hand at other films, they were all box-office flops, with them giving bad to average performances. Most importantly, Pinoteau portrayed adolescents as deserving of respect and showed their often egoistic behaviour with understanding. It was neither always justifiable, nor perpetually wrong. It was just their way of expressing their feelings in what is justifiably regarded as the most difficult period of one's life.
What is to say about the music? Composer Vladimir Cosma wrote one of the best film scores I've ever heard. Combining pop elements with synth-pop, ska and rock, he created an aesthetically pleasing soundtrack with hit potential shown by the worldwide succes of the theme song "Reality" by Richard Sanderson. Synth-driven songs like "Go on forever" and "Gotta get a move on" contrast perfectly with ska music probably influenced by Madness like "Formalities" and "It was love". The arrangements are also well made and contribute to the pleasure of the listener. It's obvious now why Cosma received a gold disc for the OST album in France.
Interesting to note in the film is the characers' fascination with 50s and 60s culture. Penélope invites Vic to watch classic Hollywood films at the (famous for its screenings of strange movies) Pagoda cinema, she has a James Dean poster hung up on her bedroom wall, while the teens listen to music of the rock'n'roll revival genre in the boums. Cosma engaged then-popular revival act The Cruisers to sing the 50s-like song "Swingin' around", showing that teens also listened to music not corresponding to the trends of their era, but of the previous one. One could say that Penélope was one of the precursors of the "born in the wrong generation" mentality, now exhibited by some internet users. While living in a time of supposedly "timeless" culture herself, she appreciates and shamelessly admires the films and music of a precedent time. This combination of love for the past but life in the present could also be seen to be one of the more subtle themes of the film.
It was through all these elements that "La boum" won the love of millions of teenagers the world over. Released in Japan, the US and most of Europe, it made thousands dream of first love and wishing they were Vic, Penélope, or Mathieu, symbols of an age that is now lost forever.
Unfortunately, none of the actors (except for the star) managed to break through in the movie business. Only Penélope-Sheila O'Connor had another successful film, the excellent "P. R. O. F. S" (1985), in which she portrayed a student who has a crush on an attractive teacher played by Patrick Bruel. Her role, though, was secondary, and she abandoned the film business shortly after. The other ones continued their careers in the 80's, but they only got typecast in formulaic comedies about dysfunctional families (the Beretton type), or lame romantic dramas about lost-then found teen loves (see "L'été de nos quinze ans" (1985) for an example, starring Alexandre Sterling aka Mathieu).
Since they couldn't find any success in the cinema, the young actors resorted to singing in order to remain famous for another 15 minutes. Sophie Marceau herself recorded "Dream in blue", a romantic slow song with a catchy melody and quite confusing lyrics in a duet with pop singer and film composer François Valéry. Boosted by her newfound fame, the single sold 600,000 copies in 1981. After an unsuccessful album in 1985, she stopped her singing career so as to focus on acting, something which proved to be a smart move. The others weren't so lucky. Sheila O'Connor aka Penélope recorded "Japan", an intriguing pop song with an equally hit-promising melody and strange lyrics about a love story in the title country. This, however, passed unnoticed. Alexandre Sterling, Vic's "Boum" lover, recorded some singles in the 90s, with only "Bal à Buckingham", a fast-paced synthesiser-driven song about a failed love story in England (sorry, The UK), achieving some success. He, abandoned show business shortly after, never to be seen ever since.
So, was it worth it? The Boum adventure started off as a scriptwriter's dream, turned into a box-office success, and marked a generation of teenagers. In France and Germany, it is considered cult. But if we think about all those now unknown faces that appear on the screen while watching it, we understand that while a film can open the door to fame for one person, it can close the same door for the ones that followed them, but missed.
Still, it is the film that made me love the 80s, discover French culture, and, most importantly, dream of being there too, in a house far away in France, the lights closed, dancing with someone shoulder to shoulder, with a song coming out from the stereo;
Dreams are my reality
The only kind of real fantasy
Illusions are a common thing
I try to live in dreams
It seems as if it's meant to be
For me, it was surely meant to be, though it never was.
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