cold water (olivier assayas, 1994)

Cold Water is my fifth Olivier Assayas film, and I still haven't seen a bad one. Set in 1972, the movie offers what feels like an accurate portrayal of teenagers at a certain point in time and place, and in fact Assayas was the same age in 1972 as the characters in this film. Assayas gets honest work from the largely non-professional cast ... they never seem like amateurs. He also seamlessly integrates Virginie Ledoyen as Christine into the film, Ledoyen being a pro who had been a child performer. She's very natural in Cold Water, and you don't get the feeling she's a cut above her castmates in skill.

Assayas also makes masterful use of music in Cold Water. There is barely any music in the first half of the film, which focuses on a couple of teenagers and their perilous relationships with parents. This, too, is honest ... the parents aren't just authoritarian morons, the kids are far from perfect. Then, at about the halfway point, a party ensues, created seemingly out of nowhere by a community of teens who meet at an abandoned ruin. They listen to music (this is crucial), they smoke weed, they start a bonfire, they talk and talk and talk to each other, and throughout, Assayas and cinematographer Denis Lenoir snake the handheld camera through the party. We only catch fragments of the conversation, except for key scenes with Christine and her nominal boyfriend Gilles, played by Cyprien Fouquet, who as far as I can tell has never acted since. Christine and Gilles are the teens we get closest to, and the acting styles of Ledoyen and Fouquet blend beautifully. The music is appropriately of its time, and it's all in English, which is likely what French teenagers listened to in 1972. Assayas says he's drawing on his own memories. He also says he essentially used the music in the long party scene to drive the narrative.

The music had another, unforeseen, impact on Cold Water. It features Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Nico, Roxy Music, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Uriah Heep, and Donovan, and it's a bit murky how the rights to all that music were obtained. But once the film was ready to be released in the US, whatever rights they might have had no longer held. Which is why this 1994 film didn't get a real release in the States until Criterion put out their edition in 2018.

It takes its time getting to that party scene, but it's worth it.