Have you noticed how the quality of acting in films of the 90s is consistently "good" to "very good"? Hardly ever "bad," and then again, hardly ever "great"? To me, this is due to the casting directors (taking over from the former directors and producers) nabbing actors in their physical prime and expertly assigning them given roles. The result is a consistent level of good quality acting, significantly raising the level of merely adequate scripts and sustaining audience attention far beyond what the material would normally elicit. "Wild Reeds" is a case in point. Set in southwest France in 1962, Andre Techine's film is generally a loosely written and structured coming-of-age story essentially about four older teens in a boarding school passing into adulthood. We learn a bit about their social values, more about their political views (especially the French-Algerian conflict) and a lot about their sexual inclinations. What we don't learn is what Director Techine or his scriptors, Olivier Massart and Gilles Taurand are trying to say. The story goes along from character to character without a motivating force. There's a good deal of talk about a lot of things, but no particular central viewpoint is conveyed in a concise manner. It's a film without form or end, which just sort of stops at a certain point because that's about the general length of a feature. Yet the film is interesting, mainly due to the youthful beauty and quality of the male and female actors, beautifully cast in these roles. As probably will be the usual case, we'll look for them in vain in the future to see their other work. They've been "perfectly" cast here, and their work is permanently documented in "Wild Reeds." But the film itself--casting aside--is an episodic, loose, cloudy and unfocused piece of work. It cries out for a central theme forcefully projected, even though the general atmosphere is deliberately languid and atmospheric (Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" is often heard in the background). While we've enjoyed meeting these characters briefly and learning about their concerns, we long for a central viewpoint to give their expressions definition. And that takes a good deal more than merely fine casting and "good" acting to accomplish this.
Review of Wild Reeds
