by Nathan Wolfson

Maité, the daughter of the local leftist schoolteacher provides an axle around which the film's characters revolve. Her mother's plight is a key instance in which the political upheavals of the international social system are reflected through the events of daily life. In the film's opening sequence, a soldier asks her to assist him to go "AWOL" and avoid returning to the war against the colonial liberationists in Algeria. She declines to assist him. Whether she is unable or simply unwilling is unclear. But she does confess to having helped similarly positioned soldiers previously. When he dies in battle shortly thereafter she has a nervous breakdown and is hospitalized, leaving Maité alone. Politics deprives Maité of her mother.

Serge (who vies with Maité for the attention of her best friend, Francois) is politicized by the death of his brother whom Maité's mother refused to help. Henri's life is similarly politicized by the brutal killing of his father by liberationists in Algeria. The result: he dislikes leftists. That prejudice, combined with his inability to develop the proper attitude to succeed in secondary school even by the age of twenty one, bring him into direct conflict with Maité's mother (his teacher, who also runs the local Communist Party headquarters) and, by association, with Maité.

In a telling interlude, Henri is criticized by Maité's mother for writing disparaging remarks about the indigenous people of Algeria in a French composition. She says, "What do you know of the Algerian people?" implying that he does not understand their plight and should therefor not be criticizing their efforts at liberation.

Of course, what he knows of the Algerian people is that they killed his father. And all she (apparently) knows of the Algerian people is second-hand knowledge about what she deems a typical part of the international proletariat. I choose to read this situation as an indictment of war no matter what the reason (a position I find meritable though difficult). But one might easily see it as a dismissal of traditional progressive politics -- especially if one ignores the obvious sympathy for the human condition at the heart of Wild Reeds.

Teenage sexual experimentation is one of the chief elements Téchiné introduces into this politicized "drama of adolescence". More running time is devoted to this material than to the overt political elements in the film. And though the treatment of the subject is frightfully sympathetic, the ruminations remain largely inconclusive. One can readily surmise that "coming of age" is a confusing, furtive process. What is less clear is how such tribulations relate to the rest of one's life.

At precisely the moment when the story could have opened up to explore the relationship between awakening sexuality and adult identity, Téchiné diffuses the query. Shortly after his first sexual experience with another boy, Francois (Maité's best friend) queries the quietly homosexual shoe-shop owner about the path this older man has taken -- and how he got from adolescence to middle age. The older man says that he cannot remember what it was like to be young and confused - - and dismisses the boy.

Similarly, Wild Reeds never offers an insight into the mystery of the relationship between life-choices made during adolescence and the rest of one's life -- and leaves the viewer as befuddled as the characters on the screen. The effect is deliberate but the meaning can seem frustratingly unclear. Which makes experiencing the film remarkably similar to experiencing adolescence.