Dying or Feeling Better

The French have an enduring love for adolescent or school days' movies and it's nice to report that Barbosa's new entry to the genre comes up with something new. His deceptively simple drama concerns the experiences of 14 year-old self-harming Martial (Civil) who comes with his recently divorced mother from the suburbs to a more modest city centre school. As the film follows his fraught first days – including an embarrassing birthday party to which he has to bribe popular classmate Lucas (Berling) to attend as the sole guest – the scene seems familiar but as he falls thrall to two mysterious twins, it becomes progressively more intriguing – tense and and off the wall. Barbosa's approach is sensitively tied to the particular sexual and emotional neuroses and pleasures of the late adolescent and his film adds up, finally, to a neat, unusual and cinematically  expressive essay on the natural urge for experimentation and transgression of the age group he anatomises.