25/07/2023 - Hugo P Thomas delivers a refreshing and funny, sociological teen movie about two young country kids entangled in an enormous lie

"No-one gives a crap about us. We weren’t born in the right place, we don’t even have a media library to tag". This place where young teens Jordan and Patrick mope about, killing time with endless games on their PS4s when they’re not out on their bikes riding through fields or studying the inescapable curriculum at the local high school, is the small (imaginary), rural town of Mornas, and it’s in this typically peripheral area of France that Hugo P Thomas has chosen to set Juniors [+see also:
trailer
film profile] - his second feature film after Willy 1^er [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (screened in Cannes’ 2016 ACID section) - which is a playful and sociological teen movie due to be released in French cinemas on 26 July, courtesy of The Jokers.

"Are you sure we’re not going to get caught?" Patrick (Noah Zandouche) is worried, because a combination of circumstances (a disastrous haircut between rookie friends and the subsequent decision to totally shave his head in order to put it right) has given Jordan (Ewan Bourdelles) an idea: if a Korean who he plays with online thinks he has cancer, they might be able to make a bit of money by launching a crowd-funding campaign on Twitch. It’s no sooner said than done - a melodramatic video in English ("please, help me to stay alive") soon follows. And it works: their fund slowly increases. But what Jordan had totally failed to grasp is the fact that all the young people in the area also hang tend to around on social media. His lie is swiftly discovered by everyone around him (his teachers included), apart from his mother (Vanessa Paradis), and Jordan finds himself playing the part of a hero fighting against an illness. It’s a role he takes a liking to and which forces him into all kinds of acrobatics to prevent the truth from coming out. Until it finally does…

Juniors respects all the codes of the genre with its archetypal teens (geeks, the top-dog bully, the girl who doesn’t fit in, conformity, the desire to integrate and the clumsiness inherent to this age, wandering down school corridors and jostling in the canteen, etc.), and plays the comedy card very aptly (alternating tones to hilarious effect), but the film is ultimately elevated by the subtle incorporation of themes of friendship and filial relationships which become dominant in the film’s home stretch. It’s an inventive and tragicomic blend bordering on the surreal ("a gang of bald men", "a potato-gun bazooka", " PE lessons in extreme self-defence", etc.) and guaranteeing irrepressible roars of laughter, and a modern, innocent, rural rereading, falling somewhere between Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The French Kissers [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (to mention but two of the most obvious references). But most importantly, it paints an endearing portrait of the fish tank in which an entire young generation are flapping around, trapped in the paradox of a morose existence with no immediate future on the horizon and total virtual interconnection. It’s a paradox which resonates perfectly with a young protagonist of ambivalent charm ("I’m not a saint. If you’re looking for a perfect guy, it’s not me. If you’re looking for someone who learns from his mistakes, I might fit the bill") offered up by a far more complex filmmaker that he might appear at first glance.

Juniors is produced by Baxter Films and Les Films Velvet, and is sold worldwide by WTFilms.

(Translated from French)