In the classic décor of the sun-drenched French Riviera, to be exact in La Baie des Anges, fifteen-year-old Orso meets his great love, fourteen-year-old Marie. He has escaped from remand home and keeps himself alive with clever tricks and minor thefts. She, a Bardot look-alike, is the ‘Lolita of the beaches’: she behaves like an adult and turns the heads of American sailors. They maintain her and she enjoys the swimming every day and the parties every night. She also hangs around with some contemporaries. Orso is one of them, and is just as liberated as she is.
There isn’t an adult in sight in Pradal’s film; all the teenage protagonists could be orphans for all we know. Of course Orso and Marie, despite their youthful wisdom, make an attempt to escape from reality, but it is doomed to failure. Lovers can never escape the world for ever, as is clear when Pradal decides it’s curtains for his young heroes.
The young French director worked on realising his feature début for five years. Marie Baie des Anges is full of ideas. The film is in the tradition of Godard’s Pierrot le fou and A bout de souffle and of Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups, but is without doubt a film of the nineties.
