Les Beaux gosses (Arte): is the film inspired by the real life of Riad Sattouf?

In The beautiful kids, broadcast this Wednesday, March 29, 2023, at 8:55 p.m., Hervé, 14, and his friend Kamel are middle school students who think more about girls than about school and their professional future. Not necessarily considering himself more handsome or lucky than another, Hervé is surprised the day when the lovely Aurore seems to be interested in him. Hervé is Vincent Lacoste, in the role that revealed it. The relationship he will forge with the author of the comic strip and director of the film, Riad Sattouf, is one that unites a big brother and his little brother. But the tender and sometimes cruel memories shelled in The beautiful kids are they those of Sattouf himself?

The college years

Adolescence, described as a thankless age, moderately inspires authors and directors. Or at both ends. Thus, the end of childhood and its relative innocence irrigates The Four Hundred Blowsby François Truffaut, while the high school years and their relationships between girls and boys are at the heart of the second part of Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Fabelmans. But between the two, those college years, which are mostly adults of grim memory, seem unattractive. Between puberty and its hormonal surges, the difficulty of positioning oneself in relation to others, the first clumsy games of seduction, the unfiltered cruelty of certain comrades, nothing seems obvious. Except to consider that La Boom, featuring an already beaming 13-year-old Sophie Marceau, is an exact photograph of adolescence. Yet it is precisely where it hurts that Riad Sattouf has, in a clever way, decided to put his entomologist’s gaze.

Young and pretty?

To begin with, Riad Sattouf acknowledges having wanted to avoid the pitfall of embellishment at all costs, by presenting young models: “I didn’t want teenagers like in pubs, beautiful and wild, the nymph, the giton, the rebel, the Arab on duty… I wanted ugly ducklings. With faces, ways of speaking, approaches. (…) It took me three months to find Hervé and the other roles. The choice was made in Paris in high schools and colleges (…) 500 kids to watch on cassettes!” Moreover, the director distinguishes between fiction and reality: “It is not a directly autobiographical film. I was a shy, uneventful teenager. If I had told about my adolescence, I think it would have been boring (…) But the relationships I had with my friends at the time were close to what I show. We had very girlish voices, ridiculous names (well especially for me) and puny physiques.” This truth which shines through in the evocation of adolescence by The beautiful kids in fact all the price, as well as its success at the box office.