A Paris Education

Watching A Paris Education, one might get the impression that the French New Wave is alive and well. The young protagonists in Jean-Paul Civeyrac's story experience the same existential dilemmas and emotional predicaments that plagued Antoine Doinel half a century earlier. The French director is by no means content to be Godard and Truffaut's epigone. Although Civeyrac consciously focuses on the old-fashioned, black-and-white cinematography, he also addresses contemporary issues. The protagonists, ambitious students at a Paris film school, acrimoniously debate gender equality, as well as other hot-button issues. Above all, however, they discuss their own views on the cinematic arts (right away in the first scene, we witness an argument about the work of Paolo Sorrentino). The nature of all these heated conversations leaves no doubt that A Paris Education is a classic coming-of-age story whose characters want to get to know themselves better. Civeyrac instills in viewers the reassuring conviction that this can be achieved with the help of cinema.