Word: morreau
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...single flaw spoils the film--the character actors perform up to par, the French countryside is breathtaking, and Marie's development proceeds with innocuous charm. Yet Morreau gets so caught up in every little detail of Marie's summer experience that her film begins itself to seem a little adolescent...
...innocence is a rapidly disappearing commodity in Jeanne Morreau's film L' Adolescente (The Adolescent). The threatening image of war flickers in the background of the film, set during the summer of 1939 in France, as Marie (Laetitia Chauveau) undergoes her monumental transition to womanhood...
Consequently, too much is only hinted at, left lurking in the background: Morreau never lets on what, if any, significance she hangs on Marie's adolescence. Do her experiences symbolize Europe's response to the approach of the Second World War? Is Morreau trying to show how even country life can be disrupted by war? Does Marie represent a growing external consciousness of life or is she just a little girl with an over-active libido...
...Morreau on the one hand paints a pastoral landscape with all the interwoven relationships of a small, isolated community. Marie's grandmother (Simone Signoret) acts as an omniscient narrator, lyrically introducing all the characters and explaining all the village's social intricacies. All sorts of representative characters abound--star crossed lovers, old hags doubling as witches, and dumb country bumpkins. Marie meets all these characters and is swept along into their mundane lives until the volcanic outset of her maturity...