Voyous voyelles (2000)
Directed by Serge Meynard

Film Review

Voyous voyelles is one of just three films that Serge Meynard directed for the cinema (following L'Oeil au beurre noir (1987) and Sexes faibles! (1992)) and it's not hard to see that Meynard is primarily a television director. Unambitious and conventional though the film is, it does offer a convincing and engaging portrait of adolescent rebellion, with the added bonus that this one is, unusually, concerned with rebellious teenage girls - effectively a girls version of Les 400 coups. The girls in question are a colourful trio of talented performers that comprise Olivia Bonamy, Audrey Tautou and Axelle Ade-Pasdeloup, the first two of whom went on to find stardom not long afterwards - Bonamy through her part in Claude Lelouch's Une pour toutes, Tautou winning a César for her role in Tonie Marshall's Vénus Beauté Institut. Tautou went on to even better things when Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave her the lead role in Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, the part that made her an international film star.

For a supposedly social realist drama, Voyous voyelles is somewhat lacking in conviction and relies too heavily on the three lead actresses to make it credible. The housing estates where the girls live look implausibly clean and safe (and white).  Even the teenage boys (predominantly white) who hang around the streets appear friendly and co-operative - a far cry from Mathieu Kassovitz's view of a similar social setting in his film La Haine (1995). If the film is meant to represent social deprivation in modern day France, it seems to have gone for the Jacques Demy approach, sweeping all of life's ugliness way out of camera shot and leaving us with an idealised version of reality. Fortunately, the quality of the acting and writing make up for the film's obvious shortcomings in other departments. Some well-judged humour prevents this from being just another miserabilist study in teenage angst and the lead actresses bring a freshness and spontaneity to the film that make it well worth watching.

Film Synopsis

After the death of their father in a diving accident, two teenager sisters Léa and Aurélie live with their mother on a Parisian housing estate. Aurélie uses her young sister to lure young men to a sports stadium, where she robs them.  One such scam is witnessed by Anne-Sophie, a 19 year old girl who is about to kill herself after having been rejected by her former lover, Bernard.  The three girls strike up an uneasy friendship and Anne-Sophie moves in with the girls, pretending to be an English exchange student.  Léa and Aurélie decide to help their new friend get even with Bernard.  In return, Anne-Sophie agrees to help the two girls in luring and robbing more victims, an innocent game which suddenly takes a dramatic turn...