Sounds Like Teen Spirit
UK 2008
Director: Jamie Jay Johnson
French Film
UK 2008
Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Victoria Hamilton, Eric Cantona
Director: Jackie Oudney
IF THE cutely punning title of Sounds Like Teen Spirit – even more cutely subtitled A Popumentary – doesn’t put you off, then you may well enjoy the film itself, which chronicles several participants at the 2007 renewal of what’s described as “Europe’s premier youth contest”. British audiences are forgiven for never having heard of Junior Eurovision, as it’s never (yet) been broadcast in this country, nor has the United Kingdom ever taken part. But, just like the “senior” Eurovision, the kiddie equivalent is apparently quite a big deal on the other side of the Channel, especially among “newer” nations on the continent’s central and eastern fringes.
Adhering to the “competition-documentary” format that’s become a disappointingly common manifestation of non-fiction film-making – and which still hasn’t been surpassed since Jeffrey Blitz`s genuinely palm-dampening Spellbound (2002) – director Jamie Jay Johnson tracks a small handful of hopefuls through their national competitions and on to the grand finale in Rotterdam. The latter turns out to be every bit as over-produced and kitschily amusing (“I’m wetting myself with excitement” bleats one of the hosts) as one might fear/hope, with no end of laughter, showbizzy effort and tears before bedtime.
Shot on video, briskly edited (we’re skipped across vast geographical distances with breezy nonchalance) and executed with a bouncy off-handedness that walks a narrow line between affectionate parody and condescending bemusement – with some flip, animated interludes recounting turbulent periods from European history along the way – Sounds Like Teen Spirit is an entertaining and undemanding affair that would work just as well on the small screen as the large.
There are some intriguing and topical subtexts about the Americanisation of Europe. A Bulgarian 14-year-old from a well-off background acts and sounds eerily Californian. There’s also the “Europeanisation” of the disparate continent, whose junior members, as we see and hear, are now almost entirely conversant in the increasingly global lingua franca of (American) English – even if competition rules insist they perform in their own languages.
Many of them are also, as we witness, growing up alarmingly fast – not that Sounds Like Teen Spirit, which ends up much more of a celebration than a mockery – troubles itself to ponder too deeply the potentially damaging impact of such high-pressure, hyper-competitive enterprises on the fragile psyches of its precocious entrants.
Neil Young
FRENCH Film, an English comedy-drama about a middle-aged magazine feature writer, Jed (Hugh Bonneville) whose relationship with his partner of 10 years, Cheryl (Victoria Hamilton) flounders after he asks her to marry him, has one good exchange to recommend it. Jed is complaining about the philosophic posturing of the French, in particular of film director Thierry Grimandi (Eric Cantona), whose films he is researching. “You’re racist”, complains Cheryl. ‘I’m not racist”, counters Jed. ‘I’m xenophobic. Racism is when you know nothing about a culture. Xenophobia is when you know everything.”
Alas, I was not convinced that writer Aschlin Ditta and director Jackie Oudney really know anything about French cinema. In the pastiches that pepper the film, there are the sorts of associative close-ups (a dripping tap, a coffee cup) that went out of fashion with silent cinema – Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou.
The fictitious Grimandi makes films about unlikely beginnings. In one, a man deliberately baits a woman who slept with him by offering her 100 francs the next morning. That’s £10. A prostitute would be offended. In another, a woman prevents a man from committing suicide in the style of Luc Besson’s Angel-A. But Oudney’s film is about a very likely outcome.
There is a good twist involving Jed’s best friend Marcus (Douglas Henshall), who displays a talent for downing a pint in one go. Otherwise, laughs are not at a premium.
Jed proposes to Cheryl because he knows she’ll refuse and he can end the relationship. However, we are not given a reason to care. Jed clearly has a rapport with Marcus’ girlfriend, Sophie (Anne-Marie Duff), on whom Marcus is cheating, so we can guess the rest.
There is a moderately entertaining scene in which Jed and Sophie are served fish and chips flavoured ice cream in an upmarket restaurant that suggests a desire to head towards magic realism. Then a French marriage counsellor (Jean Dell) pronounces the “s” in Paris and realism goes to pot. With scenes that show smoking in pubs and Eurostar trains departing from Waterloo, French Film is not so much a date movie as a dated one.
Patrick Mulcahy
