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(BANDE ANNONCE)

Autumn 1963. Anne Weber, 13 (Eléonore Klarwein, dazzling in her first role), lives in Paris with her divorced mother (Anouk Ferjac) and big sister Frédérique (Odile Michel), two years older. It’s the beginning of the school year and the two girls are going back to their strict all-girls school. Anne yearns to wear stockings, which her mother strictly forbids, and to enjoy a peppermint soda (the diabolo menthe from the French title) in a café. She just cannot seem to grow up fast enough. While their mother is caught up with her own new boyfriend, and between conversations about boys with her friends, Anne watches her sister get a boyfriend and turn to political activism (which, after sex, might have been the biggest fear of 1960s parents!). Her sister’s choice foreshadows the 1968 unrest that will happen five years later.

The semi-autobiographical Diabolo Menthe is a loving slice of life (director Diane Kurys cheekily dedicated it to her sister “who still hasn’t given back my orange sweater”) that spans one year with the Weber family. Kurys, at the time a struggling actress, directed Diabolo Menthe, her first film, in 1977, about 15 years after the action takes place. The film is both anchored in its period, the rigid 1960s, and timeless in its presentation of the woe of being a teenage girl. Forty years later, it hasn’t lost any of its appeal.