Featuring candid discussion about hopes and dreams, love and heartbreak, family and friends, this engrossing documentary makes an inspired connection between classic literature and contemporary teen life in modern-day Marseille as one high school class studies the 17th-century novel La princesse de Clèves.
Direction
Sauder treats teenagers with rare dignity; no exploitation, pure observation.
Writing
La Fayette's novel becomes unexpectedly urgent through their mouths.
Director
Régis Sauder
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
La princesse de Clèves is mandatory reading in French lycées, notorious for being 'boring' — this film weaponizes that reputation brilliantly.
Sauder filmed at Lycée Diderot in Marseille's northern quartiers, where unemployment runs 40% — the novel's courtly restraint becomes almost satirical against this backdrop.
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