Zahia Dehar, director Rebecca Zlotowski and Mina Farid at a "Une Fille Facile" Premiere in Paris, ... [+]
WireImageFrench film An Easy Girl (Une fille facile) landed on Netflix on August 13. Set on the beautiful Riviera coast, Rebecca Zlotowski’s film is a re-imagining of a coming-of-age tale about desire and seduction.
The film follows Naïma (played by Mina Farid), a teenager living in the glamorous seaside town of Cannes in the south of France. She is our narrator, and from whose viewpoint the story is told. The school bell rings, signaling the end of school term and the beginning of the summer holidays. Naïma is celebrating her sixteenth birthday and she plans with her best friend Dodo (“Riley” Lakdhar Dridi) to audition and fulfill their joint dream of becoming famous actors. She is also due to start an internship in the kitchens of the luxury hotel where her mother works as a chambermaid.
Naïma, however, will soon forget all of this as she finds that her cousin Sofia (played by Zahia Dehar) has come from Paris for a visit to spend the summer with her. The teenager is immediately transfixed by her cousin. The two young women become inseparable, spending their days at the beach, and their nights in nightclubs. Sofia is the girl from the opening images. She has fancy clothes and jewelry, and can somehow afford a Chanel bag. Naïma discovers her cousin's hedonistic lifestyle and soon witnesses how her cousin catches men’s attention.
One night, the girls meet two middle-aged men, Andres (Nuno Lopes) and Philippe (Benoît Magimel). Andres is a Brazilian millionaire, who likes to collect beautiful objects, while Philippe helps him find them. Andres invites Sofia and her cousin to his yacht, leading Naïma to soon discover how her cousin can afford Chanel bags.
Naïma continues to follow with naïve curiosity her cousin around, which enables her to discover the way the ultra-rich live—a world she knows nothing about, as she confesses to Philippe that she has never been on a boat before, even though she is from this seaside town. The film continuously emphasizes the divide between these opposite classes, with the personnel on the boat, for example, looking down at the two cousins.
The city of Cannes has become a city where the ultra-rich and the working class face each other, but rarely meet. In a sequence near the beginning of the film, Andres is singing sitting on the deck of his yacht. Philippe looks at how the passersby gaze at them, and retreats to the back where he cannot be seen. Andres though enjoys this play of gazes, as he explains to Philippe that one must know poverty to enjoy being rich, and conversely, to bear poverty you must know that wealth exists. The film shows the rare times these two classes do meet, through Andres and Sofia’s sexual affair.
What makes this film so unique and intriguing is the perspective from which the story is told. We follow Naïma as she observes, and we observe with her. Despite the film’s title, a name-calling that judges a woman who is sexually candid, the film and by extension the protagonist, Naïma, never judges Sofia’s character. The film rather turns on their heads those who do.
There are echoes of legendary films set on the Riviera in Zlotowski’s film, notably Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse in the opening sequence. An Easy Girl also recalls films that starred Brigitte Bardot, through Zaha Dehar’s performance, whose diction seems to imitate the famous French actress’ unique and distinctly recognizable way of speaking. Bardot was also known for her roles that portrayed sexually emancipated young women, in films such as Roger Vadim’s And God… Created Woman.
Mina Farid’s performance is particularly nuanced, conveying a sincere innocence that makes her young character’s coming-of-age journey compelling.
An Easy Girl was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, and had a theatrical release in France at the end of August 2019. The film didn’t do very well at the box office in France, even though it boasted some great critical reviews after its premiere at Cannes.
An Easy Girl is now on Netflix.
The Link LonkAugust 16, 2020 at 03:00AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheenascott/2020/08/15/an-easy-girl-a-french-riviera-coming-of-age-tale-on-netflix/
‘An Easy Girl’: A French Riviera Coming-Of-Age Tale On Netflix - Forbes
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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