Wild reeds = Les Roseaux sauvages

It is 1962 and at a boarding school in rural France two young men from vastly different worlds - Francois is an urban intellectual and Serge is a farmer’s son - begin a tentative friendship. Both boys find themselves attracted to Maite, their school teacher’s daughter, but Francois must also deal with the first awakening of homosexual desire for his best friend. Their innocence is shattered by the arrival of the Algerian born Henri who brings with him the militant racist anger of the colonial expatriate, an anger he directs against his fellow school mates and towards the Communist sympathising Maite. Techine’s “Wild reeds” is possibly the defining work of French cinema at the end of the twentieth century. In setting his story in the early sixties, Techine is both acknowledging the debt owed to the Nouvelle Vague (in particular to Truffaut), as well as firmly establishing through his mise-en-scene his debt to the older, neglected French tradition of directors such as Renoir, Carne and Clair. Even though the film itself is vastly enjoyable as a narrative of adolescent rites of passage, it can also be read as an attempt to re-interrogate the cultural and historical legacy of French decolonisation and of the generation of 1968; the generation whose work and ideologies were to overwhelm French cinema and aesthetics for over two decades. “Wild reeds”, like “La haine”, “World without pity” and “Irma Vep”, is a sign of the renewal of French cinema - the exploration of new terrain and the possible reconciliation of past struggles and disruptions. This is a wonderful film. The outstanding cinematography is by Jeanne Lapoirie. The cast include Elodie Bouchez, Gael Morel, Stephane Rideau and Frederic Gorny. (Awards: Winner of the Cesar for Best Film and Best Director, 1995)