Passe ton bac d'abord...

Ten years after L’ENFANCE NUE about the anguishes of a foster child, Pialat talks to an actress of the film, Pierette Deplanque. She tells him about her adolescence, her hopes, her disappointments, she tells of her school days, of first love and her work. Pialat asks Arlette Langman, the screenwriter of L’ENFANCE, to write a scenario about these experiences. But all of a sudden, what was planned to be a portrait of a young woman, transforms itself into a mosaic of stories of the adolescence of people in the city of Lens in northern France. PASSE TON BAC D’ABORD is the portrait of a young generation, a film, that could easily be called a teen movie, if it wasn’t Pialat who directed it. Filmed in cinéma vérité style, PASSE TON BAC is a realistic, raw and tragic version of juvenile life, rejecting the clichés and demagogic visions that french movies of a certain period have depicted. It is a film, that grasps a certain moment of life, focussing on the posing, the language and the rituals of young people, the melody of life. (Olivier Bitoun)