Young directors from Paris to Athens are tackling the existential woes of 'adulescent' twentysomethings
July is not normally a month for seminal cinema in France. But even the summer lull and the heatwave in France haven't managed to eclipse totally the release of Juliette, the first film by 24-year-old director Pierre Godeau, which is being heralded as the latest example of a new wave of European films dealing with youth and the eurozone meltdown.
Featuring the 27-year-old Franco-Spanish actress Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, known for her role as Syrena in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Juliette tells the story of a young woman who keeps postponing the moment when she'll have to make choices in life.
It is a far cry from the carefree atmosphere of films such as Cédric Klapisch's L'Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck) in 2002, and its follow-up, Russians Dolls. Describing pre-euro-crisis European youngsters on the Erasmus exchange programme more concerned with sharing amorous recipes than finding a first job, Pot Luck evoked the joyous, albeit chaotic, flat-sharing scene in Barcelona, where students of various nationalities lived together. It showed a communal vision of Europe: messy, perhaps, but irrevocably supportive and terribly fun.
Ten years later and the mood feels definitely sombre. No more jubilant "Euro-pudding" films à la Klapisch; the crisis has instead bred moody films dealing in European angst.
In an interview for French newspaper Libération, the grey-eyed and chain-smoking Bergès-Frisbey links the existential crisis of her generation with today's economic and moral problems: "This is a petrifying moment in our lives. We have never known a world without internet, mobile phones, instant messaging. In other words, we have access to everything at all times and yet all paths seem blocked. We have more tools, more choices, and yet we live as if constantly paralysed."
In Juliette, we also see a society that idolises dreams and fantasies. "There is almost an injunction on today's youth to lead fascinating lives. But if we fail, and most of us are doomed to, we'll be considered losers," continues Bergès-Frisbey. Not having the courage to grow up, and to face up to reality, Juliette is the face of a generation who prefer to continue living with their parents. French sociologists have coined a term to describe them: "adulescents".
Beyond the simple and depressing economic facts, Juliette also speaks of a moral and cultural malaise nobody has found a name for. Bergès-Frisbey sums it up: "We live in a vacuous world, yet we do so with a feeling of urgency."
Juliette comes just after two other films that have shocked the rest of Europe with their brazen take on eurozone life. Oh Boy, by first-time director Jan Ole Gerster, reaped many film awards back home in Germany, including best film, director, actor, screenplay and soundtrack.
Shot in black and white with an uncompromising jazz score, Oh Boy tells the story of Niko, played by Tom Schilling, an apathetic young Berliner who floats through life and can't reach any decision. He's not very endearing, but the world around him is even less so. So who's to blame?
In Greece, unsurprisingly, aspiring film directors grapple with an even harsher reality. First-time director Ektoras Lygizos's Boy Eating the Bird's Food struck festivalgoers in Karlovy Vary and at Toronto last year, where it was first shown. Twenty-three-year-old Yorgos cannot find a suitable job, despite an obvious talent for singing, and ends up surviving by eating his pet canary's food. He may have a roof above his head, yet he has scarcely any money left for food and refuses to ask for help from friends or family. Unemployment feeds the character's sense of alienation and his increasing psychosis is exacerbated by actual hunger.
However, the current anguish undoubtedly felt by Europe's youth doesn't always translate into such dreary terms. Some choose to treat their anxieties through surreal humour. This year, at the Cannes film festival, the directors' fortnight sidebar selected a first feature film by 39-year-old cinematographer Antonin Peretjatko. Called La Fille du 14 Juillet (The Bastille Day Girl), the film was released in France a month ago. With almost no dialogue and an eerie poetry, the film enchanted French critics. According to Libération's Bruno Icher, "here is an exhilarating road-movie through a country in crisis, a broken land split between a phony modernity and musty traditions." For Christophe Leparc, managing director of the directors' fortnight at Cannes, "many first-time directors choose genres such as comedy, horror, fantasies, to talk of today's harsh daily life, as if they had to circumvent the issue."
Dubbed a pataphysical burlesque comedy with nods to Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Tati, Blake Edwards and Monty Python, La Fille du 14 Juillet shouldn't be a laughing matter. After all, no one in the film has a steady job, everybody scrapes a living by doing odd jobs, and nobody has any sense of optimism. Yet worse is to come: the French government announces at the end of July that the summer holidays have been drastically cut short by parliamentary decree; everybody must return to work at once. The group of friends, who had taken to the road for their holidays, drinking themselves silly and wearing T-shirts with the logo McMerde, must now go back to Paris. Strangely, nobody in the country thinks of rebelling, even though they all keep referring to the French revolution and the guillotine. For the Juliette generation, it seems, a shrug of the shoulders is the only option, as la crise in the eurozone drags on.
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