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FILMS / REVIEWS

Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

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- A new cinematographic experience for the subtle French filmmaker who was awarded in Cannes in 2008, as this time he adapts a Joyce Carol Oates novel set in the 1950s.

After winning a Palme d'Or for his masterful The Class [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carole Scotta
interview: Laurent Cantet
film profile
]
, which looked at France in microcosm-form in a banlieue school, French director Laurent Cantet again keeps his camera focused on young rebels in his latest outing, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang [+see also:
trailer
interview: Laurent Cantet
film profile
]
.

Shot in Ontario, Canada, which convincingly stands in for Smalltown, U.S.A. (upstate New York in the novel) in the 1950s, the film adapts the novel by Joyce Carol Oates and is Cantet's second Anglophone project after Heading South [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laurent Cantet
interview: Robin Campillo
interview: Simon Arnal-Szlovak
film profile
]
(which was in a mixture of French and English).

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Like The Class, Cantet has decided to again work with young adolescents without any acting experience, which adds a layer of veracity in his contemporary look at France and its education system in his Cannes winner but which works less well here, given that today's girls are not exactly the same as those in the 1950s, especially a nostalgia-tinged 1950s culled from a literary work, with some of especially the supporting roles coming across as much too modern.

That said, young Raven Adamson, who plays the charismatic and rebellious leader of the gang, Legs, is certainly a find. Throughout the different kinds of trouble she gets the girls into, she always seems to be guided by a combination of instincts and a vision of what Foxfire (the name of the secret gang) should and can be.

Quite long at 143 minutes, the film nonetheless benefits from the impeccable production design of Franckie Diago (who already worked with Cantet on Heading South) and the fluidity of the work of the director's regular cinematographer Pierre Milon.

Foxfire was produced and will be distributed by Haut et Court in France. Canadian outfit The Film Farm co-produced, with backing from Telefilm Canada. Memento Films handles international sales.

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