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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Culture -> 
Adolescents
    2020-12-23  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

French filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz managed to put out two of his best works this year: the feature documentaries “Little Girl” and “Adolescents,” both of which saw distribution and critical acclaim at home.

In “Adolescents,” Lifshitz followed the lives of two teenage girls, Anais and Emma, for five years, from junior high up through their baccalaureate exams.

The film is a tale of two very different families living in the same city: Anais’ is poor and problem-ridden; Emma’s rich and stifled.

What’s most telling about Lifshitz’s depiction of these dual paths is the way it reveals how social status, especially in a somewhat rigidly class-structured country like France, winds up playing a key role in each girl’s fate, assuring they will have very different futures but never guaranteeing which one of them will be happier.

Indeed, if Anais, whose working-class parents face untold hardships, including a fire that destroys their home and a medical emergency that puts her mother in a coma, is definitely the unluckier of the pair, she doesn’t show it often. Forced at a young age to fend for herself, as well as to take care of her baby brother, she chooses a vocational high school that will put her on an early career path — to become a caregiver for either children or senior citizens — and moves out of the house in order to finish her studies.

As difficult as that sounds, Anais is surrounded by friends, has at least one major boyfriend with whom she breaks up, resulting in much heartache, and has a seriously active social life that sometimes gets in the way of her school work. But by the time she’s ready to graduate, she already seems like an adult — one who appears to be more mature than her parents.

Emma, on the other hand, has everything a girl needs to get by, at least on the surface: a beautiful home nestled in the countryside, a mother who’s constantly on top of her about homework — this is the source of much contention between them — and a pretty face and figure that could prove helpful in her quest to becoming an actress.

And yet, Emma may be one of the sulkiest teenagers ever seen on screen. She never seems happy with anything, especially her mom, who is constantly criticizing Emma’s every move. And while Emma has a few friends with whom she sometimes goes clubbing, she doesn’t seem to want a boyfriend.

Lifshitz never passes judgment on either girl. But his film does have you draw your own conclusions about two people who let him into their lives for so long, capturing some very dark moments, some very pleasant ones and the kind of mundanity that we all live with from day to day.

“Adolescents” also steps back to reveal the bigger events that will shape its subjects throughout the years, especially the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan terrorist attacks, whose ripple effects were felt throughout France.

Whether joyful like Anais or a bit stolid like Emma, their faces have hardened by the time they’re ready to go their separate ways, as if they’ve finally begun to realize what life is all about. (SD-Agencies)

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