Lola Doillon: Just About Love?

And finally she arrived. With a one-day delay Lola Doillon joined us at Liffe. Just About Love?, this young French director’s first feature, has this week attracted crowds of spectators to Cankarjev dom. One of the reasons might have been also that the film is competing for the Kingfisher Award, bestowed by a three-member international jury, and that this was the first screening of the film outside its native France.

The plot is quite simple: a group of good friends in the bloom of their youth tread the boundaries between friendship and desire. But when you are fifteen and you haven’t had sex yet and your virginity hangs above you like a dark cloud the story is no longer simple. A week before the summer break schoolmates Ẻlodie and Julie decide to lose their virginity before the school is over. Each envisions this in her own way, with her potential beau. The matters get complicated, though, when Ẻlodie’s best friend Vincent thwarts all plans: he ‘accidentally’ sleeps with Julie, then goes to confess to Ẻlodie that he wants them to be more than friends…

Just About Love? is an excellent account of teen confusion about first experience of sexual intercourse, the dilemma when, where and how to lose virginity. The relations between the youth crumble and break off as soon as sexual desire encroaches on friendship (“It’s just happened”). The resentment cools off sooner or later, after new experience and realisations (“If THAT was sex, why is it so exaggerated??”) the ties between friends become even stronger.

Barbara Spreiz