SPRING BLOSSOM (Seize printemps)
KimStim
Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten
Director: Suzanne Lindon
Writer: Suzanne Lindon
Cast: Suzanne Lindon, Arnaud Valois, Frédéric Pierrot, Florence Viala, Rebecca Marder
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 5/10/21
Opens: May 21, 2021

In the 1979 movie “Manhattan” Isaac Davis (Woody Allen) tells his friend Yale (Michael Murphy) that he is dating a girl (Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway) who does homework. For much of the film, Isaac is trying to get out of that relationship, but Tracy keeps pestering him, insisting that she is old enough, mature for her age. In “Spring Blossom” (“Seize printemps” in the French title meaning, literally, “16 Spring”), Raphaël Frei (Arnaud Valois) is more or less dating Suzanne (Suzanne Lindon), with no intention of breaking up with her. Raphaël, an actor, is 35, and Suzanne, a high-school student, is 16, and the good news is that in France, 15 is he age of consent.

However nothing more sexy than some slow dancing occurs on screen, though we hope that the gentleman, on the cusp of middle age, worries that he would be taking advantage of her should he bring the brief relationship to another plane. Suzanne Lindon in the principal role is in reality twenty years old, the writer and director as well—which might make some in the audience think that this is a vanity project. It is not, but you might guess safely that some autobiographical material is on display. She is in virtually every scene of this 73-minutes’ tranche de vie, and she is credible. A delight, in fact.

She is a shy girl, not the type you’d expect to be hitting on an older man, even though she feels awkward around kids her own age, finds them boring, thinks that school is barely so-so. What’s more, Raphael exudes shyness, a guy who likely finds the stage a welcome feature in his life where he can play an oak tree, which he literally does in this French theater in Paris’ Montmartre section.

We can feel the exhilaration that comes with first love, the emotions describe as well in Maureen Daly’s novel “Seventeenth Summer,” which is required reading in some American middle schools. While he is quite fond of this refreshing young woman, she is in a lover’s trance, telling her seatmate in high school to shut up during a lecture on early Christianity in a humorous scene in which the other girl whispers questions like “Was Jesus Jewish or Christian?”

Suzanne’s dad (Frédéric Pierrot) captures some of the movie’s droll moments, a gentle fellow who tries to understand his daughter’s seeming distance when he talks to her. There are particularly French moments when Suzanne orders her favorite drink, grenadine and lemonade, seated “by coincidence” at the table next to Raphael, but the real highlight comes from a trio of musical numbers—not the brash type you might expect on Broadway but those requiring a suspension of disbelief as when Raphael puts headphones on Suzanne to show why he loves the overture to his stage play and the two, eyes closed, gesture to the music with their arms. Who needs to take Ecstasy when a piece of baroque music takes center stage? Since nobody in this cast uses a smart phone, we may wonder whether these are characters in the baroque age as well.

Suzanne Lindon has an advantage that most women do not have at her age to write and direct films: her real-life dad is actor Vincent Lindon (“La Haine,” “The Measure of a Man”) and her mother is actress Sandrine Kimberlain (Mademoiselle Chambon). Her screen chemistry with a fellow nineteen years her senior is palpable, particularly in a final slow dance when the two emerge virtually as one.

73 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, NY Film Critics Online

Story – B
Acting – B+
Technical – B
Overall – B+