Stella (Sylvie Verheyde, 2008)
Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 10:07 am
I saw Sylvie Verheyde's Stella at Cinemateket, Copenhagen as a "feature of the month" earlier in 2010 (towards the end of 2009, Cinemateket introduced a new concept of having a "feature of the month" - dedicated to new films, which were somehow too small to get a proper distribution in Denmark).
Stella is a wonderful film about an eleven year old girl in Paris in the 1970's. She's not good at school but she's much more mature than her classmates - probably because of her upbringing at her parent's inn/bar amongst lodging drunks and misfits.
The story is told from the girl's POV with some irony, and the actors - especially the kids - are marvellous. The period setting is also nice. The film is perhaps somewhat in the vein of My Life as a Dog, although with less irony, and not quite as sentimental either. It also reminds me in a way of Diane Kurys' La baule-les-Pins (1990), not least because of the autobiographic element (I believe Stella is partly autobiographic, and set at a time when Sylvie Verheyde herself was 11 years old). I'm not sure if Verheyde can be considered an auteur but I enjoyed this film almost just as much as any film with kids by Truffaut, Pialat, Malle or Miller. It's probably not a timelss classic but it's sweet, subdued, and unpretentious.
I don't know if there are any English-friendly dvd's but it's released on dvd in at least France and Italy. I bought the French dvd (without English subs) and found some excellent English subs on the net (although not in sync, which I've corrected manually).
Stella is a wonderful film about an eleven year old girl in Paris in the 1970's. She's not good at school but she's much more mature than her classmates - probably because of her upbringing at her parent's inn/bar amongst lodging drunks and misfits.
The story is told from the girl's POV with some irony, and the actors - especially the kids - are marvellous. The period setting is also nice. The film is perhaps somewhat in the vein of My Life as a Dog, although with less irony, and not quite as sentimental either. It also reminds me in a way of Diane Kurys' La baule-les-Pins (1990), not least because of the autobiographic element (I believe Stella is partly autobiographic, and set at a time when Sylvie Verheyde herself was 11 years old). I'm not sure if Verheyde can be considered an auteur but I enjoyed this film almost just as much as any film with kids by Truffaut, Pialat, Malle or Miller. It's probably not a timelss classic but it's sweet, subdued, and unpretentious.
I don't know if there are any English-friendly dvd's but it's released on dvd in at least France and Italy. I bought the French dvd (without English subs) and found some excellent English subs on the net (although not in sync, which I've corrected manually).