Kechiche’s second feature is a spirited and insightful comedy of manners that connects France’s classical literary heritage with its contemporary social reality. At a high school in the banlieue, shy, sweet 15-year-old Krimo takes on the male lead in a school production of a Marivaux play, hoping it might serve as the script to his own seduction of his leading lady, the diva-ish Lydia. The reversals and obstructions of Marivaux’s comic plot filter through the confused mores and conflicting desires of various girls and boys.
