Based on her own time spent in the acting school Les Amandiers, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” aims to recreate a very specific time and place both in her life and in France, more than it cares to inform her audience about what, exactly, was so special about this school. Funded in the 1980s by Patrice Chéreau, a successful and daring director of theatre, opera and film, Les Amandiers did not last very long but for a few years it was considered to be one of the most exciting places in France and even Europe for young actors to develop their crafts, and for directors to find new talent.
Some, but not all, of this information can be gleaned from the film itself, and giving viewers a real feeling of its place and reputation at the time would have raised the stakes considerably. As it is, the film’s extreme subjectivity is sometimes alienating: the group of young actors we see auditioning for a slot in the 1986 promotion of the school naturally consider the place to be the ne plus ultra of acting in the country, or they would not be there, but we simply have to take their word for it.
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We do not get much insight into what makes the acting lessons given there particularly unique, either, and the one-note intensity of the students’ performance (the large majority involve screaming and crying) is often off-putting. In fact, Tedeschi does not seem particularly interested in convincing her audience of the quality of this teaching or type of performance, and “Forever Young” is at its best when it works as a relatively straightforward but enjoyable ensemble film.
All of the driven and charismatic young students are at an age where most people embrace sharply defined, bigger-than-life identities in order to weather the storms of young adulthood, and these archetypes lend themselves well to the ensemble format. When the film switches its focus from one set of characters to another in this way, it is perfectly satisfying to simply take a step back and observe these libidinous, tireless, somewhat stereotypical students and their interactions without too much concern for emotional realism or nuance.
The film, however, dedicates its main storyline to Tedeschi stand-in Stella (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) who falls in love with a bad boy, Etienne (Sofiane Bennacer). As another student points out, Etienne has very clearly chosen Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire” as his personal avatar, and the two characters’ tempestuous romance hits predictable beats. But Stella’s naivety in this relationship echoes the general optimism of her generation, and the film maintains a good balance between this love story and the excitement and dynamics of the group.
Regarding the latter, “Forever Young” excels at evoking the sexually liberated atmosphere that must surely exist in any acting school, but which appears to have been particularly electric at the Lee Starsberg-inspired Amandiers. Perhaps because it is based on Tedeschi’s own life, however, the film thankfully avoids reducing the rich experience of youth just to sex: these kids were genuinely excited about their craft, and their all-consuming adventure also included hard work, just as it did innocent, childish fun. But even as Tedeschi keeps us firmly confined to the students’ own little universe, she also translates very well the emotions they must have felt upon seeing their utopian bubble suddenly popped by threats from the big wide world outside of the school. In retrospect, that the AIDS crisis would be part of this story feels inevitable, and it is to the writers’ and the actors’ credit that its emergence in the story feels like a truly earth-shattering moment and not just another narrative beat.
In that context as in that of their lessons, the young actors give the impression of being at the mercy of events outside their control, carried away by powerful currents that are either good or bad, but most of the time the two things at once. Such are the drugs that Etienne takes that initially help relieve him of his depression, but this also goes for the gravitational pull exerted by both Chéreau (played by a Louis Garrel in great form) and his colleague Pierre Romans (Micha Lescot). The film does not shy away from portraying them as extremely charismatic and inspiring teachers who protected and pushed their students, but who also sometimes abused their power.
There, as in the rest of the film, we are not told what to think but simply exposed to the complex (partly true, partly fictionalized) facts. More than non-judgmental towards her characters, however, Tedeschi is extremely loving and compassionate, embracing their contradictions and sympathizing with their youthful confusion and heartaches. While the film’s narrative structure is straightforward, taking a practically objective perspective on those events and people, its style eagerly seeks to capture all the beauty and emotion of these moments. The dynamic camera of director of photography Julien Poupard stays close to the actors at all times, always in step with them to capture their excitement and the intensity of their unbridled emotions. It is this direct line to the characters that keeps the film relatively interesting, even as it does become rather exhausting to watch these very kooky and carefree young people gallivanting about. The talent of the cast, too (many of them relative unknowns in the world of cinema so far) is a pleasure to watch, and we can expect to see many of those very distinctive faces in more films in the future — which might ultimately be the most interesting facet of “Forever Young,” a passionate film that often feels frustratingly remote. [C]
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