Cocktail Molotov
Directed byDiane Kurys
Written byDiane Kurys
Screenplay byDiane Kurys
Produced byAlexandre Films
StarringElise Caron
Philippe Lebas
Francois Cluzet
CinematographyPhilippe Rousellot
Edited byJoële Van Effenterre
Music byYves Simon
Distributed byAgence méditerranéenne de location de films (AMLF)
Release date
  • 6 February 1980 (1980-02-06)
Running time
100 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Box office$3.5 million[1]

Cocktail Molotov is a 1980 French drama film written and directed by Diane Kurys. It is her second feature after Peppermint Soda. A female coming of age story set during the spring and summer of 1968, the film is not a sequel but can be considered a companion piece to its predecessor.[2] It has been called a female take on the male-dominated road movie genre.[3]

Plot

Seventeen-year-old middle-class Anne (Elise Caron), runs away with her working-class boyfriend Frederic (Philippe Lebas) and his friend Bruno (Francois Cluzet) after a violent fight with her mother.[4] Anne convinces the others to drive to Venice, where she plans to take a ship to Israel in order to join a kibbutz. On the road, Anne grapples with experiences of love, sex, abortion, and "existential wandering".[5] Upon reaching Venice, they learn of the social uprising back in Paris. With their money running out and their car stolen, they hitchhike back to find they have missed the excitement.[6]

Cast

Reception

Cocktail Molotov did not do as well as Peppermint Soda, Kurys' critically acclaimed first feature released three years earlier.[7][8] Film studies scholar Carrie Tarr has written that audiences may have been confused by Kurys treatment of May '68 as nearly devoid of protest and politics, instead focusing on an explicitly female personal drama, as opposed to the generally male-centered view of the student revolts. She also notes that Kurys had had to rewrite the script due to budget constraints which made reenacting the barricading of Paris streets impossible, and further cut explicitly political scenes out in the editing process to further emphasize the teenagers' story.[9] Perhaps in a reaction to its lack of political content, Vincent Canby's 1981 review in The New York Times called the film "a nearly perfect example of the kind of French film that apotheosizes middle-class values while pretending to question them".[10] While Tarr writes that the film does not depict abortion, love triangles, or the subjectivity of the female central character as well as other films,[11] its autobiographical elements, its pairing of personal narrative with larger, historical events[12] and other connections with the rest of Kurys' filmography mark it as an essential part of her work as auteur.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ "Cocktail Molotov (1980) – JPBox-Office".
  2. ↑ Tarr 1999, p. 39.
  3. ↑ Tarr 1999, p. 53.
  4. ↑ Foster 1995, p. 211.
  5. ↑ Foster 1995, p. 211.
  6. ↑ Canby 1981.
  7. ↑ Tarr 1999, pp. 40, 150.
  8. ↑ Tarr 2002, p. 223.
  9. ↑ Tarr 1999, pp. 39–40.
  10. ↑ Canby 1981.
  11. ↑ Tarr 1999, p. 54.
  12. ↑ Tarr 1999, p. 45.
  13. ↑ Tarr 1999, p. 143

References

  • Canby, Vincent (2015). "NY Times: 'Cocktail Molotov'". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 23 November 2015. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  • Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. Women Film Directors: an International Bio-critical Dictionary. Greenwood Press, Westport, 1995.
  • Tarr, Carrie. Diane Kurys. Manchester University Press, New York, 1999.
  • Tarr, Carrie.Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers ed. by Yvonne Tasker. Rutledge, New York, 2002.
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