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Peppermint Soda

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Peppermint Soda
Diabolo menthe. Poster design by Floc'h.
Directed byDiane Kurys
Written byDiane Kurys
Alain Le Henry
Produced bySerge Laski
StarringEléonore Klarwein
Odile Michel
CinematographyPhilippe Rousselot
Edited byJoële Van Effenterre
Music byYves Simon
Distributed byAlexandre Films
Films de l'Alma
Franco London Films
Gaumont
Release date
  • 14 December 1977 (1977-12-14)
Running time
97 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Budget€360,000[1]
Box office$22,602,285[2]

Peppermint Soda (Template:Lang-fr) is a 1977 French comedy-drama film directed by Diane Kurys. This autobiographical film was her directorial debut, and it won the prestigious Prix Louis-Delluc at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.

The film follows two teenage sisters over the course of the year 1963, with the title referring to a grown-up carbonated beverage that the younger sister drinks in a café. The high school where the film takes place is the Lycée Jules-Ferry in Paris, France. The film is partly based on director Kurys’ experiences, and opens with a title card that states: “For my sister—who still hasn’t given me back my orange sweater.”

Plot

The film opens in September 1963 where 13-year-old Anne Weber and her 15-year-old sister Frédérique are spending the summer holiday with their newly divorced father on the coast. They then return to Paris live with their mother for the school year. The girls attend a strict all-girls school, the Lycée Jules-Ferry.

The first half of the movie mainly focuses on the younger Anne—the more introverted of the two. At school, Anne is not an achiever and is mocked by a teacher for a substandard drawing during art class. She’s upset at her mother for not buying her stockings, since everyone else at the school wears them. Anne is also anxious to get her period because it signifies reaching womanhood, and so she pretends she has menstrual cramps despite not actually having begun her period. She and her friends discuss what they know about sex and humorously reveal their lack of knowledge about it. She also sneaks a look at the letters sent between Frédérique and her boyfriend Marc, and falsely claims to her school friends Marc is her boyfriend.

The second half of the film focuses on Frédérique. Though she has a boyfriend Marc, she starts to lose interest in him as she becomes more politically active around the issue of the Algerian War and her Jewish identity. Her new interest in activism causes a falling out with her wealthy friend Perrine. Frédérique befriends the outspoken Pascale, a classmate who gives a horrific account to her class of a peaceful protest against far-right extremists that was violently broken up by French police.

Another of Frédérique’s school friends, Muriel, runs away, and rumors and gossip abound as to where she might have gone to. When visiting with Muriel’s worried father, the older man makes a pass at Frédérique just before she leaves the house. Muriel eventually returns briefly and reveals she dropped out of school and now lives with a boyfriend. Frédérique also becomes involved in school plays. On the opening night of a play she stars in, her father attends, but to Frédérique’s dismay, he does not stay afterwards to congratulate her. The film concludes with the girls, a little older and wiser, returning to their father’s home on the beach for holiday.

Cast

Production

Diane Kurys had no prior directorial experience, saying prior to the film she had “never held a camera or even taken a still photograph."[3] She conceived of the idea for the film when she "began thinking that there are a lot of films about adolescent boys, since most directors are men, but there are very few films about girls in high school and how they're raised. I decided to make this film out of my own memories."[3] Kurys added, “But I didn't want to make adolescence a happy time. I wanted to show that it's difficult to be a 13-year-old girl, to want something desperately even if it's only a pair of pantyhose and to have nobody understand you.”[3]

Kurys received partial funding for the film through a grant program, in addition to the support of Gaumont. Said Kurys, "[Gaumont] were very skeptical, as you can imagine, but at that time I had such energy and conviction that they finally said, ‘Maybe she's crazy, but let's give her a try.'”[3] Kurys drew on her own experiences as a young adolescent, setting the film at the same lycée she attended and partly basing the characters on her real-life sister and herself.[4] Filming began on August 1977.[1][5]

Eléonore Klarwein was the same age as her character during filming. Klarwein, who had no previous acting experience, recalled the most challenging scenes for her to film were, "First, the one where I have my period, because I didn't have it in reality and because it touched on the intimate. Then, the one where I take a bath with my sister who puts her toes in my mouth. Disgusting. On top of that, I'm topless in the bathtub and it was embarrassing. Finally, the one where my sister makes me fall from a sofa: there, I hurt myself."[1]

The film's music was composed by Yves Simon.[1] Simon contributed the title song “Diabolo Menthe”, which became a hit song in France.[6]

Release

Peppermint Soda was released in France on 14 December 1977, where it was a box office success, earning "70,000 admissions the first week"[1] and became a cult classic.[1] The film drew comparisons to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, another French coming-of-age film that was set in a similar time period.[3][7] It won the Louis Delluc Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.[3]

It was released in North America on 15 July 1979 and was reviewed positively. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it an "expert, utterly charming movie" that is "sweet and buoyant in its innocence."[8] Kurys continued Anne's story in the 1980 film Cocktail Molotov, a companion piece which is set in 1968.[3]

Re-release

The film was digitally restored by the Cohen Film Collection in 2018 for its 40th anniversary.[9] Writing of the restored version, Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “'Peppermint Soda' is, like its summer-cooling namesake, a concoction that signifies childhood, a refreshment likely to spark a memory. Kurys’ fondness for that time of fumbling and outgrowing is as fresh today as it was when it heralded a perceptive new filmmaking talent, especially because underneath these affectionately extracted remembrances is an unshakeable sisterly bond — of admiration, exasperation and watchfulness — that gives the story of Anne and Frédérique a deeper hold."[10]

The 2K restoration was released on Blu-ray on 12 February 2019.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f ""Diabolo Menthe": l'histoire douce-amère d'un film culte". www.vanityfair.fr (in French). 20 June 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  2. ^ "Diabolo menthe (1977) - JPBox-Office".
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Jacobs, Diane (5 August 1979). "She Put the Fizz in 'Peppermint Soda'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  4. ^ Almino, Elisa Wouk (13 August 2018). ""I Couldn't Avoid the '60s": Diane Kurys on Her Early Filmmaking in France". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  5. ^ Bender, Abbey (9 August 2018). "Revisiting a Female Adolescence with Diane Kurys and "Peppermint Soda"". MUBI. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  6. ^ "Video Premiere: Soko Is Confronted with Her Exes in "Diablo Menthe" Cover". W Magazine. 25 January 2018. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  7. ^ Palmer, Tim; Michael, Charlie (2013). Directory of World Cinema: France. Intellect Books. pp. 78–80. ISBN 9781841505633.
  8. ^ Maslin, Janet (15 July 1979). "Film: Diane Kurys 'Peppermint Soda':The Cast". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  9. ^ Erbland, Kate (31 July 2018). "'Peppermint Soda' Trailer: Diane Kurys' Bubbly Autobiographical Coming-of-Age Tale Gets a 40th Anniversary Restoration". IndieWire. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  10. ^ Abele, Robert (30 August 2018). "Review: Diane Kurys' restored 'Peppermint Soda,' summer's other eighth-grade story you need to see". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  11. ^ "Peppermint Soda Blu-ray (Diabolo menthe)", www.blu-ray.com, retrieved 15 April 2022
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