For­ev­er Young – first-look review

“Do you think an actress needs to be an exhi­bi­tion­ist?” asks a the­atre direc­tor to an audi­tion­ee at the begin­ning of For­ev­er Young, a film that could have end­ed in the first five min­utes if the ultra-earnest young girl had sim­ply answered truth­ful­ly (and saved us all quite a lot of time): yes. 

In a film entire­ly con­cerned with actors and act­ing, there’s a stud­ied lack of real­ism per­me­at­ing the self-seri­ous toils of a young the­atre troupe lucky enough to attend the icon­ic stu­dio. All have man­aged to earn a place in the com­pet­i­tive act­ing pro­gram run by Patrice Chéreau, and after a pre­lim­i­nary open­ing audi­tion mon­tage and inevitably dra­mat­ic rev­e­la­tion of who’s in and who’s out, the group set to work putting on a pro­duc­tion of Anton Chekhov’s Platonov.

Dri­ve My Car this is not. In the role of Chéreau, i.e the Lee Stras­berg or Stel­la Adler of France, Louis Gar­rel gives a charis­mat­ic and com­ic turn as an over­wrought Herr Direk­tor type who rules his roost with weary grit and plen­ty of cocaine to boot. In-between rehearsals we see the var­i­ous issues his young star­lets are deal­ing with; a young dad refus­es to be test­ed for AIDs despite his wife’s pos­i­tive test, one girl is deter­mined to bed the school’s direc­tor, anoth­er intro­duces his pro­fes­sor to smack. 

There’s also Stel­la (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) and Eti­enne (Sofi­ane Ben­nac­er), the film’s leads, who embark on a tox­ic love affair that threat­ens to send the entire pro­duc­tion off-bal­ance. As these things go, Stel­la wasn’t real­ly inter­est­ed in Eti­enne until his tragedy emerged, thus putting in place plot machi­na­tions: he has a gnarly hero­in habit, a bro­ken home, and in his own words, is ​“psych-ward nuts.” What could the ultra-priv­i­leged hero­ine do but try her utmost to fix him? 

There’s touch­es of wel­come com­e­dy, like when Eti­enne is accused of hav­ing the jumped-up brag­gado­cio of a Mar­lon Bran­do fig­ure before prompt­ly chas­ing Stel­la out while shout­ing her fit­ting name. But beyond moments of youth­ful gid­di­ness, every step of the plot feels clichéd, and begs the ques­tion: is this a film about act­ing, or about bad acting? 

Where some­thing like Alan Parker’s Fame gave us enough time with each char­ac­ter to flesh out their hopes, dreams and down­falls, For­ev­er Young has a rest­less­ness, nev­er allow­ing us to sit with a char­ac­ter for long enough to care about their fate. 

Con­sid­er­ing the film feels like an act of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and wist­ful­ness for the direc­tor, with the film com­plete with Instax-style cin­e­matog­ra­phy and end­less, era-appro­pri­ate nee­dle­drops, the film is also pret­ty insis­tent that actors – at least these actors – are self-obsessed nar­cis­sists who need to act in order to make sense of their chaot­ic, lack­ing lives. 

It all ends feel­ing rather mud­dled. Is Tedeschi say­ing that all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women mere­ly play­ers? Or is she roman­ti­cis­ing the chaos of youth, proud of the fact she was able to chan­nel her inten­si­ty into art? While there’s a wel­come authen­tic­i­ty in the script hav­ing been formed from the director’s scat­ter­shot mem­o­ries, what makes it to the page has lit­tle nar­ra­tive cohe­sion. For any­one who thinks the­atre kids shouldn’t have rights, this will be a grat­ing expe­ri­ence from start to finish. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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