17 Filles (2011)

Directed by: Delphine Coulin, Muriel Coulin | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Louise Grinberg, Juliette Darche, Roxane Duran, Esther Garrel, Solène Rigot

The more than entertaining film ’17 filles’ focuses on a fact that is so absurd that it can only be true. The film also begins by stating that these are real facts, to allow the bizarre plot to follow. A group of girls in Lorient, France, decide to get pregnant together in order to become part of each other’s lives and in turn make the world a better place.

Full of ideologies about a better future, the teenage hormones of these young French sigh girls rage on and they feel misunderstood by the outside world, interpreted by their parents.

Delphine and Muriel Coulin – who both directed and scripted – have chosen to focus on a small group of girls of the seventeen, and that works out well. For example, we meet Camille (Louise Grinberg), who is the first girl to become (unwanted) pregnant, and soon decides to keep the child. After a short conversation with her intimate group of friends, everyone knows what to do: get a boy to bed at the upcoming party on the beach to get pregnant together.

The film sums up the girls’ lives well. In the midst of a plague of ladybugs, they mainly have fun at school and on the beach, but almost after every sigh of happiness follows an image of one of the 17 concerned, who is sitting alone in their room with their big belly, with a face that says ‘what now?’ radiates. The reactions of the parents are also shown, and by not judging themselves, Delphine and Muriel Coulin make their film enjoyable for everyone to watch.

’17 filles’ will not be a real classic; The film lacks too little power for that and there is too little idiosyncrasy in the direction, but the exceptional subject will give the film enough attention.