Review of “And Their Children After Them”: French Youth in a Small Town Gone Adrift

If you've spent time in towns in the remote provinces of a number of European countries, particularly those where the mills that provided the economic lifeblood of working-class communities have closed, leaving their inhabitants adrift without a raft, you're likely to recognise the fictional north-eastern French setting of And their children after them (Their children after them). These are places frozen in time, usually around the time their industries were shut down. This fossilization can be observed during public celebrations where locals spill out onto the dance floor as the cheesiest relics of Euro-pop are blasted from the speakers, in this case Boney M's “Rivers of Babylon”.

Screenwriter-director brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma capture that atmosphere with such specificity and wistful tenderness in their ambitious adaptation of Nicolas Mathieu’s 2018 Prix Goncourt-winning novel that it’s easy to imagine they’ve lived it, or at least something very close to it. The coming-of-age story unfolds over four summers spaced every two years, from 1992 to 1998, but could almost pass for a couple of decades earlier.

The emerging actor Paul Kircher, who attracted attention in Christophe Honoré's film Winter Boy and Thomas Cailley The animal kingdomplays the introverted and awkward Anthony, who is 14 when we first meet him. Wearing a leather motorcycle jacket in the sweltering heat, perhaps because he thinks it gives him a bit of swagger, he tosses a cigarette into the lake and then grumbles to his cousin (Louis Memmi) that the water is too gross to swim in.

But he dives in when two teenage girls, Clémence (Anouk Villemin) and Steph (Angélina Woreth), swim toward a floating platform and his excited (unnamed) cousin invites himself to join them. The nervous intensity with which Anthony steals glances at the slightly older Steph indicates his total lack of girl-play and marks the beginning of a first love destined for most to remain painfully out of reach.

Steph and Clémence invite them to a party that night at a friend's house, too far from the center of Heillange, where they live, to ride their bikes. Anthony's cousin urges him to “borrow” the precious motorcycle that his father Patrick (Gilles Lellouche) keeps under a cover in the garage. Anthony has enough experience to know how he would inflame his irascible alcoholic father, even without the warning of his worried mother Hélène (Ludivine Sagnier, terrific), but he sneaks in the Yamaha anyway. This won't be the only impulsive decision that will have repercussions over the course of six years of the story.

It's obvious from the moment they arrive at the party that the homes of the rich are a foreign land to them. Left alone after his unintimidated cousin is whisked away by Clémence, Anthony becomes depressed, becoming increasingly drunk and staggering. But he jumps at the chance to try to impress Steph when Moroccan boy Hacine (Sayyid El Alami) and his friend are told they are not welcome at the blatantly white party. Hacine kicks over a barbecue on his way out, nearly hitting Steph, and Anthony humiliates him by sticking out his foot to trip him.

This impulsive gesture is the other trigger of a domino effect of anger, retaliation and violence that affects Anthony and his family, as well as Hacine and his father Malek (Lounès Tazaïrt).

Without belaboring the point, the Boukhermas use mirroring to show how similar the two families are despite their cultural differences, right down to the fact that Patrick and Malek are former co-workers at the steel mill that looms large in the frame like a towering monument to a vanished industry. The script also ties in the predetermined likelihood that both Anthony and Hacine, as the title suggests, will struggle to get out and make a life for themselves somewhere less stultifying.

The writer-directors follow the novel in placing Anthony at the center of attention, which makes Hacine feel disadvantaged, especially because El Alami, with his dark appearance and fiery eyes, is a compelling presence. His entry into the local drug trade, for example, is mentioned once and never mentioned again, although the filmmakers' decision to keep events to four summers makes it inevitable that the audience will be left to fill in some of the gaps.

Woven into the acts of aggression between them are threads that trace the dissolution of Anthony’s family and the heartbreaking series of disappointments that keep Steph just out of reach. Again and again, opportunities for connection are narrowly missed, including an attempted rapprochement with his son by Patrick, who gradually transforms from a snarling brute into a wreck of a man, conveyed with much pathos and a bit of a heavy hand by Lellouche in moving scenes toward the end.

The “almost” aspect of the story is most acutely felt in Anthony's efforts to get close to Steph. She is played by the charming Woreth as a young woman who, despite her more comfortable middle-class upbringing, has her own issues and insecurities, which are perhaps what gives her an affinity with Anthony and keeps her from rejecting him altogether.

As Anthony grows older, a painful tension comes into play with Vanessa (Christine Gautier), a friend of his sister's first seen with her straight hair in sad-looking clips, willing to be his consoling booty call. There's no attempt to hide the fact that Anthony, sullen and reserved, is a flawed character: he uses Vanessa with little regard for her feelings; casually racist because that's how he grew up; and reluctant to accept an olive branch when it's offered.

Nevertheless, Kircher plays him with a naiveté that softens his edges. In conversation, he seems uncertain, either not responding or taking forever to get a word out. His nervousness around Steph is particularly touching as he shuffles along with a hesitant, almost Chaplin-esque gait. He seems to have grown a little more into his body with each two-year time jump. But even when he returns from a stint in the army, he remains somewhat of a vulnerable boy.

All of which adds weight to the moments when Steph and I seem to have a mutual love, particularly a tender scene during a Bastille Day celebration where they dance to Francis Cabrel's Dylan-esque “Samedi soir sur la terre.” It's one of many soulful numbers sprinkled throughout, drawing on French and international songs from the era or earlier.

The emotional force of Amaury Chabauty's soft orchestral score gradually increases and helps to change the mood at key points, such as the initial moment when the carefree pleasures of summer are abruptly swept away by despair, fear and anger.

This is a significant step forward for the Boukherma brothers from the smaller genre films they’ve made so far, and it brings a satisfying cinematic scope to material that feels more Hollywood than French, for better or worse. Their sensitive direction of intimate exchanges is sharp, even if the scenes occasionally veer from melodrama to soap opera.

Road trips have become something of a cliché in French youth films, and the directors don't shy away from them, traveling with the characters in several fluid chase sequences, on bicycles, motorcycles, a stolen canoe. But they give the film a pleasant rhythm, and cinematographer Augustin Barbaroux's clear images find both beauty and stagnation in the locations.

The film becomes a bit ungainly here and there, and the running time of just under two and a half hours could be scaled back a bit, even if the length is obviously in line with the coming-of-age novel on which it is based. A more social and political context could have justified it.

A deep vein of sadness runs through And their children after them. Even moments of joy, like the faces of a crowd watching the Bastille Day fireworks while a Johnny Hallyday song plays, or a packed bar erupting with euphoria over France’s victory in the 1998 World Cup, never quite erase the sense of one generation after another, bored and stuck, left behind by those with the means to survive.