Spring Blossom

Making her debut as star, writer and director, Suzanne Lindon accomplishes something rare, especially for someone so young.

Suzanne Lindon

To make a film debut in a starring role is a significant achievement for any actor but for Suzanne Lindon there's even more to it than that. Not only does she play the lead in Spring Blossom but in addition it is also her first work as writer and director. To underline just how remarkable all this is one only needs to add that when she made this film she was nineteen years of age. As for the film that has resulted, it is one of promise and not least for revealing Lindon's acting potential, something that she may well have inherited since her parents are Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain. But for all that, I find the film rather less telling overall than one would in the circumstances have hoped.

Convincingly playing a sixteen-year-old, Lindon portrays a schoolgirl living in Paris and has given this character her own name, Suzanne. This Suzanne is someone who feels bored with people of her own age as is well conveyed in the film's opening scenes. We see her at home with her parents and her sister and also at school where the buzz of the girls' chatter is just that. Even at a party, Suzanne comes across as a fish out of water, someone who lives in her own world. What then follows is the tale of how she finds herself drawn to a man in his mid-thirties. This is Raphaël Frei (Arnaud Valois) an actor who, playing in a small Montmartre theatre, is himself a bit of a loner. The concern of Suzanne Lindon as the writer here was to portray convincingly both what it feels like to be an adolescent with the outlook of the film's Suzanne and to capture the bond that develops between this girl and Raphaël. With this in mind she deliberately chose to show a relationship in which there is no manipulation involved preferring instead to show a genuine rapport which involves love but stops short of physical intimacy.

The tale being told is not an elaborate one and Lindon wisely gives us a film lasting no longer than 74 minutes. The fact that she started to write this piece at the age of fifteen means that she fully understands the character she is playing. At the same time Spring Blossom doesn't feel very contemporary, but that's because Lindon wanted the story to have a wider validity than it would have had if it had been tied to a world of apps and iPhones. However, Lindon is less adroit when she allows the romanticism in the film to lead into moments that are choreographed. This happens with a dance on a stage as well as with a few steps in the street and there is even a sequence in which Suzanne and Raphaël while seated at a table duplicate each other's movements in response to a recording of Vivaldi sung by Andreas Scholl supposedly being heard by Suzanne through headphones.

That Spring Blossom feels like a slight film is not necessarily a weakness since its tone is consciously a reaction against such strong adolescent dramas as Slalom in which people behave badly. But, if Suzanne herself is well realised, the subsidiary characters in contrast seem underdeveloped and, while the central situation is credible enough, Arnaud Valois makes little of the role of Raphaël Frei. Occasionally it's the writing that lets him down (it seems understandable that he might not want to draw attention to his taking up with a girl so young but then suddenly he is introducing her to his friends). However, what Valois fails to suggest is Raphaël's passion (Frei may feel the wisdom of holding back sexually, but his pursuit of this relationship suggests an underlying compulsion that the actor fails to express). As a portrait of Suzanne, the film does well, but as a love story it attains no more than a slender impact. Even so, for Suzanne Lindon to have had the courage and determination to bring this work to fruition is very much to her credit.

Original title: Seize printemps.

MANSEL STIMPSON
Slalom
Cast: Suzanne Lindon, Arnaud Valois, Frédéric Pierrot, Florence Viala, Rebecca Marder, Arthur Giusi, Pauline Rugo, Dominique Besnehard, Philippe Uchan, Françoise Widhoff, Raymond Aquaviva.

Dir Suzanne Lindon, Pro Caroline Bonmarchand, Screenplay Suzanne Lindon, Ph Jérémie Attard, Pro Des Caroline Long Nguyên, Ed Pascale Chavance, Music Vincent Delerm, Costumes Julia Dunoyer.

Avenue 8 Productions-Curzon.
74 mins. France. 2020. Rel: 23 April 2021. Available on Curzon Home Cinema. Cert. PG.