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2018-08-10

Cold Water [1994] by Olivier Assayas

Cold Water is a film made as part of the French series Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge, which required filmmakers to set their film in the year they turned 18 and to include a sequence of teens partying to the music of the day.

Olivier Assayas's is an evocative look back at being a teen in 1972 France, albeit from the perspective of a very peculiar and anti-social pair. She is in-and-out of psych wards and he is a potential terrorist. Their absolute disgust with the adults and the institutions they find themselves beneath is passionately performed, though somewhat out of touch with reality, as we can see their life skills and emotional maturity are severely lacking. 

But the film certainly captures that disgust, determination to individuate at all costs and isolation of being a 16-year-old in a world that has no place for them: certainly no child and not yet an adult.  An awkward period for anyone, here captured with passion and sympathy, awkwardness and aggression.

Peppered with the works of Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin.

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