L'eau froide

I would have thought by now I couldn't be haunted by yet another film about teen-age lovers and outsiders. Yet Assayas' lovely and bleak "Cold Water" is a valuable entry into this crowded, but rarely truly insightful field.

It's 1972. Touching on class, racism and other issues, the film follows Christine and Gilles, who live on the outskirts of Paris. Both are delinquents, indulging in petty crime and feeling outside society. But while Gilles has at least some care and support at home, Christine has a father whose only reaction to her confusion and pain is to lock her away in mental institutions. It's hard to tell where Christine's vicious cycle began. She's clearly unbalanced, but was that inevitable? Or has the act of imprisoning her, ignoring and drugging her pain, not only failed to treat her troubles, but actually caused them?

Assayas manages to take two lost, inarticulate heroes, and make us not only care about them, but identify and see ourselves in them. You don't have to have an adolescence nearly this extreme to understand the kind of inarticulate ache and anger of youth.

Not every moment works, and it could be argued that even at 90 minutes the film can feel too long for its very simple story. But whenever a film-maker takes an overused subject and finds something new to say about it, you have to take notice.

Frustratingly it continues to be unavailable in the U.S. on DVD, blu-ray or for legal download or online viewing. Given the film's excellent reputation, I can only assume that has to do with the expense of rights to the film's amazing soundtrack of 1970s music.

To answer the previous reviewer's question: Yes. Thus the title.

I had the same reaction to this Olivier Assayas study of two disaffected teens as I had to the director's later "Irma Vep", namely that it is a sometimes touching, often tedious film. There is a reason that the great early to mid seventies soundtrack stays in one's consciousness and invites almost universal praise among my ten IMDB colleagues below and that is because it is the only part of the film that is fully alive. Everything else feels slow and drawn out. Scenes tend to last too long and not do enough, like the police interrogation of Christine that takes way too long to establish the fact that she hates her father and that interminable pot/sex party which is where I'm fairly certain I would have pulled the plug were it not for Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper and Janis J. I will, say, however, that the ending is quite powerful. That empty piece of paper says it all. And I do not think I would have been as blown away by this bleak denouement without the fine performance of Virginie Ledoyen as the unhappy, angry Christine. And since Ledoyen was 18 when she did the movie, I guess you have to credit Assayas at least partly for her excellent work. Give it a B minus.

Assayas is a great director, and while this isn't my favorite of his films (right now its between "Clouds of Sils Maria" or "Summer Hours"), it still deserves a five star rating. The characters in this film are deeper and more interesting than 90% of the coming of age stories out there, and the lessons they learn aren't at all tawdry. For our full review of Cold Water and hundreds of other reviews, articles, and podcast episodes visit us at True Myth Media!

I really hadn't expected much of this movie when I saw it in Brooklyn last summer. But, as a coming of age story, it's one of the few ones that really hits home for me. Cold Water is just such a frustrated, restless film, neither condemning nor forgiving its self-involved children and inadequate parents. It's fair in that way, which is refreshing. I'm tired of hearing rich kids get a lot of breaks and tired of hearing the Richard Fords explain away their parenting mistakes.

Visually, it's not a terribly structured or naturalistic film, and maybe that's why it seems to be so right on. The frenetic energy and seeming meaninglessness of the individual shots really conveys the frustration that comes from having the faculties of an adult, but none of the powers. Those shots come together in these long, slow sequences . . . small town livin'. There's a seeming, but deceptive, plotlessness that drew a lot of recognition from me.

You shouldn't miss the party scene. Man, that brings back memories. Pure recklessness, and listening to CCR over and over and over.

Taking a low-key approach to events that are only earth-shaking to the people involved, Asseyas has made something beautiful and moving from the lives of teenagers not that different from everyone else. The inevitable tragedy plays out with complete naturalness. And the entire sequence of the party at the empty house, rhythmed by the music, is breathtaking.