L’ADOLESCENTE

Jeanne Moreau has been an international star since her 1948 theatrical and screen debuts. She both directed and starred in “Lumiere” in 1976, and further establishes her directing skill with her second film L'ADOLESCENTE. Moreau turns from the complicated life of the worldly-wise woman of “Lumiere” to the deceptively simple learning-about-life of L'ADOLESCENTE's 12-year-old heroine. Marie (Laetitia Chauveau) and her parents leave Paris to spend their annual summer with Grandmother Mamie (Simone Signoret) in her country village. It is 1939 and just as Marie's approaching womanhood colors her every thought, the invasion of Poland is imminent and the threat of war overshadows the country folk's view of life. Yet daily events are little changed: People make love, fight and mystify Marie until her comforting grandmother reveals basic facts tempered by tolerance. Marie's first love is the handsome new doctor who becomes her friend, but her mother's lover. Edith Clever (1976's “Marquise of O”) is mysterious and ripely sensual as the mother. Signoret, as always, becomes the very soul of her character. Moreau's sensitivity to place and time equals her warmly nostalgic, but unsentimental perceptions of adolescence and maturity. “L'ADOLESCENTE is a rich, evocative portrait of a last innocence.” – Howard Kissel, Women's Wear Daily