Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s

Director: Chantal Akerman

1994 / 63min / DCP

Made, like Claire Denis’s US Go Home and Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water, for the television channel Arte’s nine-part multi-director series Tous les garcons et les filles de leur âge, Akerman’s bluntly bittersweet semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film stars Circé Lethem as Michèle, a truant 15-year-old Brusselian who undertakes fumbling attempts at intimacy with Paul (Julien Rassam), a draft dodger on the run from service in the French army, even as it becomes increasingly clear that it’s her best friend, Danielle (Joëlle Marlier), who has the stronger hold on Michèle’s affections, a conflict which comes to a head in the film’s wrenching climax, a raucous party where James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” takes on a taunting tone.