Aurélie Laflamme, les pieds sur terre
Two and a half stars
Directed by: Nicolas Monette
Starring: Marianne Verville, Édith Cochrane, David La Haye, Aliocha Schneider, Pier-Luc Funk, Geneviève Chartrand, Hubert Lavallée Bellefleur, Lou-Pascal Tremblay
Running time: 113 minutes.
For the second time in less than 12 months, a Quebec filmmaker is chronicling that all-important last year of high school. But in sharp contrast to Ricardo Trogi’s 1987, one of the top-grossing local films of 2014, Aurélie Laflamme, les pieds sur terre is set in the present and, though there are some laughs to be had, it’s a much more dramatic take on the material than Trogi’s rollicking comedy.
It is the second feature based on Quebec author India Desjardins’s bestselling series of novels about a young girl, following Le Journal d’Aurélie Laflamme in 2010. Like the first movie, the new adaptation stars Marianne Verville as the title character. Verville is, once again, quite charming as an angst-ridden teenager. She has enough energy to keep us buoyed; otherwise we would be sunk in the gloom of a girl who feels like she’s an extraterrestrial.
One problem is that most of the lead actors playing the high school kids are in their early 20s and they look it, which makes it harder for us to believe they are mired in the quicksand that is Sec. V.
First-time feature director Nicolas Monette does a reasonably good job of capturing the feel of that moment in life, but the end result is uneven, with a shaky mix of not-so-convincing drama, and comedy that’s not as funny as it should be. But it probably will click with its target audience, a demographic that is seldom served by franco Quebec cinema.
Like Ricardo in 1987, Aurélie is looking square into the face of the question posed so succinctly all those years ago in the classic Twisted Sister video for We’re Not Going to Take It: What do you want to do with your life? Except Aurélie doesn’t want to rock, or at least not so much.
“It seems like everyone has a dream except for me,” she muses at one point and that kind of sums it up.
She’s not sure what she wants to study at CEGEP — who really does in Grade 11? — and her academic insecurity is only heightened by an ultra-intense French teacher, played memorably by the always-ultra-intense David La Haye, who is busting her chops. It doesn’t help when she submits a love letter to her boyfriend instead of the required essay.
The boyfriend, Nicolas (Aliocha Schneider), is a bit of a drip. He’s mopey, and early on tells her he can no longer go out with her because she’s paying too much attention to her best friend Tommy (Lou-Pascal Tremblay). Ah, the life-changing soap operatics of high school.
Édith Cochrane is very good as Aurélie’s mother, who is still having difficulty connecting with her teen daughter. But a couple of good performances aren’t enough to make up for a storyline that simply doesn’t have enough oomph to keep us hooked for the duration. It’s neither as emotionally charged as it should be, nor as funny as it could be.
