Bad Company (Mauvaises Frequentations)

Director: Jean Pierre Ameris
Screenwriters: Alain Layrac

Institute History

  • 2000 Sundance Film Festival

Description

On the first day of school, Delphine, a small, shy, and naive fifteen-year-old from a good French provincial family, meets Olivia: tall, flamboyant, and experienced. Olivia runs with a different crowd, and through her and her new boyfriend, Alain, Delphine meets Laurent. A first dance leads to a first kiss and then to first love.

Conventional as an initiation film up to this point, Bad Company
Sensitive handling of difficult subject matter by director Jean-Pierre Ameris makes Bad Company a superb exploration of the dynamics of adolescent life with its hormonal, psychological, and social pressures and of the forces which push it toward the absolute and the extreme. The characters of Delphine and Olivia, powerfully played by Maud Forget and Lou Doillon, are developed with exquisite nuance as the film probes the question of just how much one can or should sacrifice for love or friendship.

— Nicole Guillemet

Screening Details

Credits

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