PLACES IN CITIES

Mimmi is at the age where one listens politely to teachers speaking from a podium at high school and is surprised to find that one can successfully seduce men. Her adolescence is interlaced with melancholy, insecurity, silent observations, involuntary annoyance at her mother, solitude, a carefree spirit that is unruffled by remarks about the transparency of her bathing suit, and the spontaneity of an improvised dance next to a swimming pool.
Like Eustache in La Rosière de Pessac, which Mimmi watches on television during a school trip to Paris, Schanelec captures the passage of time through details that seem insignificant at first glance, such as Mimmi’s nakedness in the light that returns after a long remaining black screen or her red coat as she crosses a bicycle park. One era is coming to an end and opening onto another, of which she knows nothing yet.
“One day, you’ll beg to be understood”, says a young man whom she has just broken up with. “Great, I’ll call you,” she replies nonchalantly: the life before her still seems so long, and the weight of the passing years, so abstract. (M.H.)