TMC reviews… Highly Strung (aka Je te mangerais)

by Florentine

Here’s a question.  What do you get if you cross a curious young girl, a concert piano and an ever-so-slightly psychopathic flatmate?  One big fat lesbian mess, that’s what.  Highly Strung is the debut feature of extremely promising French writer-director Sophie Laloy, which tells the story of 20 year old Marie (Judith Davis – RÉFRACTAIRE) and her move to Lyon to enrol at the prestigious Conservatoire (that’s ‘shit hot music academy’ to you and me).  Moving away from her family is a big step for the inexperienced and excitable young Marie, but it’s her decision to flat share with mysterious childhood friend Emma (a thrillingly odd Isild Le Besco – GIRLS CAN’T SWIM, ROBERTO SUCCO, CAMPING SAUVAGE) that will really cause the proverbial excrement to hit the fan.

Zoning in on the “heady passions of unrequited adolescent love”, Laloy says she was inspired by her own rather complicated experience with a flatmate during her studies at the very same college.  After watching the film, I certainly wouldn’t be admitting to being that source of inspiration anytime soon.  For what follows Marie’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed move to a new world of personal freedom and sexual exploration, is a sometimes confusing-sometimes dangerous game of lust-fuelled cat and mouse, gloriously, all to a score of classical symphonies from Mozart, Ravel, Bach and Chopin.

It’s a scenario that will resonate all too familiarly with plenty of lesbians out there; you’re young, you’re confused… you inconveniently develop a crush on your straight best friend who, even more inconveniently, fluctuates between being curious, confused, up for it, scared, tempted, disgusted and all the way back again.  Marie doesn’t know what she wants, and as a result sends out the kind of mixed signals that bring out Emma’s worst qualities; what starts as an intense emotional attachment quickly contorts to jealousy, obsession and a dominance that can only be described as dangerous.  This is a relationship that ‘aint ever gonna end pretty.

I’ve always been a huge fan of French cinema.  If there’s one nation of filmmakers you can rely on to tackle the complicated and intense emotional recesses of the human condition without fear or sugar-coating, it’s our friends across the channel.  They’re also horribly good at injecting the kind of sensuality and sumptuousness us conservative Brits would struggle to create even out of a velvet throw and 64,000 red church candles.  You want to make a bus ride look sexy?  Lob your camera to a French director for ten minutes.  Job done.  Highly Strung is a rich, sumptuous feast from start to finish, taking us on an unapologetically disquieting stroll through a messy journey from adolescence to adulthood.  Neither of our lead characters is very noble; from Emma’s possessive and frankly terrifying attachment to her unobtainable crush, to Marie’s very conscious attempts both to tease and emotionally wound her besotted admirer (she even moves her, largely naked, new boyfriend in for good measure – way to push the knife in Mazza).  It’s bleak and it’s disturbing and it’s beautifully shot and scored.  And if you can bear to see another lesbian dalliance dragged through the gutter of tragic endings, you could do a lot worse than making Sophie Laloy’s accomplished debut the one you choose.

Highly Strung won the prestigious Zenith prize at the Montreal Film Festival last winter and can be caught at various festivals over the rest of this month.  Check out the individual websites below for information about securing tickets.  If you can’t make it along, the DVD will be available to buy from March 29^th 2010 here in the UK.

10th March: Birds Eye View Film Festival, Lexi Cinema London
19th March: Bradford Film Festival
26th – 31st March: Shortwave Cinema London