Welcome gentle reader to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s a tender-hearted coming of age story about two young French sisters set during the political turmoil of the early 1960s. Also, a bit of poetry, a dark image of modern America that seems even more relevant given the state of things.
Diabolo menthe (1977)
Reviews:
Letterboxd says:
god, i love this movie so much. i’d love it even if it were just frivolous french adolescence cinema — with 13-year-old anne serving dreamy trench coat looks and shoplifting out of teen rebellion — but her 15-year-old sister frédérique’s radicalization as the school’s antifa queen is an exhilarating kick. the kids are indeed alright.
p.s. there is a brief slow dance scene set to “sleep walk” — i’ve declared on multiple occasions that if i ever made a movie i would want a “sleep walk” slow dance scene
and
I didn’t live in Paris in the 60’s but it’s so easy to relate to these bittersweet experiences. Peppermint Soda doesn’t focus solely on one sister, but a balance of both. A three year age gap separates them, such a small yet dramatic difference. I appreciated the subtleties between peers. Little glances and shifts. This film has a lilting quality that’s just out of grasp. Everything that occurs happens at a very natural pace. You can feel how personal this must have been for Diane Kurys. The problems and emotions are very sincere, though the film shows them with grace and restraint. Possibly the greatest female coming of age film of all time.
The Playlist says:
Yet in the 1970s, a handful of important voices emerged, with films that presented French women as more than living dolls, crafting these characters with depth and richness previously unseen. Kurys was one of those voices; “Peppermint Soda” was her debut film, released in 1977, drawing heavily on her own teenage years. Her unique voice and perspective are immediately present. Charting a school year after a summer at the seaside, a sequence of students merely hanging out and catching up on the first day of school is striking for its offhand naturalism—Kurys (and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot) beautifully capture the way these young women talk, interact, and react.
Alt Citizen says:
Director Diane Kurys beautifully captures this emotional time of adolescence while also addressing a turbulent political dichotomy in France. Peppermint Soda is an intimate account of the bond between women; sisters, friends and the mother. Yet the French director doesn’t consider herself a “feminist director,” she is simply a director who recounts stories that she is familiar with — and her debut film, is quite autobiographical.
Released in 1977 it quickly became a cult classic and won the prestigious Louis Delluc Film award. Although it takes places in the early 1960’s around 1962-1963, this film is a timeless classic, while also bringing the French back to a moment of deep nostalgia, the schools segregated by gender, dancing to the twist, drinking peppermint sodas which became an even more popular pastime after the song “Diabolo Menthe” (Peppermint Soda) by popular French chanteur Yves Simon, who did the soundtrack for the film.
My take:
I really like this charming film. It doesn’t have a straightforward narrative, a set story. Rather, it presents the daily life of two young girls, their adventures and travails, as they wend their way through school, friendships, and relations with the opposite sex. I definitely be watching this one again. See the interview with the director at the bottom of the page when you are done with the film.
Director: Diane Kurys
Writers: Diane Kurys, Alain Le Henry
Notable actors: Éléonore Klarwein, Odile Michel
Plot (Spoilers!):
The year is 1963 in Paris and sisters Anne (Klarwein) and Frédérique (Michel) have a lot on their plates. Their parents are divorced and not on speaking terms. They attend a very strict school where Anne isn’t doing very well and is openly mocked by some of her teachers. She desperately wishes to have her period to prove her womanhood and she explores the mysteries of boyfriends by reading her older sister’s love letters and stealing photos.
Frédérique is wrestling with her up and down feelings for her boyfriend. She breaks up with him when she starts to find him annoying and discovers politics. She raises the ire of her school administrators when she hands out political badges at school and is involved in a small riot where she is targeted for her Jewish background. She has also developed a small crush on a much older man, the father of a friend of hers who has gone missing.
The message is that adolescence is a hard road to travel. The girls navigate these stormy waters with a ethereal innocence that melts the heart. We are left with the sense that they will land on their feet.
***
On to the poetry. I wrote this about five years ago. About 20 years prior to that, I had thought of the last line “shat from the ass of the Golgotha parade” one day while in class. It just kind of popped into my head. Then, about 15 years later, I awoke one morning and knew in my heart that I was ready to write the poem. Enjoy! Or not…
Sour milk brass band squirting
Curdled streamers of home and hearth.
Waxy residue sliding down the empty faces
Of the hollow, hungry mobs
Feasting on whipped sugar shit foam
Hope
And servile rage.
Pressing in, grasping at nothing.
Skeletal beasts prancing
Flowers and finger bones
Dragging wailing corpse wagons
Down fly-blown streets
Trailing barbed wire ribbons
Wrapped with shameful smiles.
Teeth cracking and popping
Under rough shod hooves.
Above, iron clouds
Booming drums of gray,
Lightning screams
Down the stairs headfirst
To frame the dire vision
Of the Machine.
Stacks spewing oily black processed love.
Gears screaming, choked with cries
And sooty grease from the Oven.
Brain flecked red wheels roll baby roll!
Engorged on white phosphorus And the DU blues.
Laughing voids
Leering and winking
Riding high!
Gnawing and snapping
Insatiably satisfied
Beaming down with high pride
Upon the shattered eggshell skull fragments
Shat from the ass
Of the Golgotha Parade.
