Event

Peppermint Soda @ Robert Classic French Film Festival

Diane Kurys, 1977, 101 min., color, new restoration, DCP projection source

In the vein of such classic coming-of-age classics as François Truffauts The 400 Blows, Diane Kurys Peppermint Soda captures a particular moment in the tumultuous life and development of young people. Anne (Eléonore Klarwein) and Frederique (Odile Michel) are sisters entering their teen years in 1963 France, torn between divorced parents and struggling with the confines of their strict school. Along the way, they undergo an awakening both political and romantic. Kurys celebrated film revels in the comedy and tragedy of the seemingly mundane, weaving a complex tapestry of everyday existence that also touches on the universal.

Robert Abele in the LA Times writes: Aspiring filmmakers struggling with how to be specific yet universal especially when it comes to material steeped in autobiography should do themselves a favor and get to know French filmmaker Diane Kurys wonderfully unsentimental, captivating 1977 debut, Peppermint Soda, which chronicles a year in the life of two teenage sisters, children of divorce, and was drawn from Kurys own girlhood. The film is a kinetic slideshow of incipient maturitys roiling promise that Kurys makes both era-vivid (hello early 60s) and timelessly appealing (hello grades, teachers, parents, boys, freedom and politics). Especially for audiences who took to Bo Burnhams summer indie hit Eighth Grade, a heart-stopping time capsule about an outcast middle schooler, the tart, clear-eyed observations and swerving realities in Kurys coming-of-age classic make for a fitting hands-across-the-generations companion piece.

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Jean-Louis Pautrot, professor of French and international studies at Saint Louis University.

Sponsored by Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation