La Belle Personne

The title’s putative beautiful person is Junie (Seydoux), a misleadingly naïflike girl who arrives at a new high school only to find herself caught romantically between her caddish Italian-language teacher (Garrel) and a smitten classmate (Leprince-Ringuet) who’s too innocent to know better. The film is a modernized adaptation of Madame de Lafayette’s 1678 novel La Princesse de Clèves, and Honoré’s approach is intriguingly poised between the drab naturalism of much recent French cinema and the more determined strictures of high tragedy. The characters aren’t just learning foreign languages; for all their miscommunications, each one might as well be speaking his or her own.

La Belle Personne effectively captures the pain of unrequited love in high school, a bell jar where everyone knows everyone and the rumor mill rivals that of Dangerous Liaisons. The film is hampered by a shaggy-dog quality and the casting of Garrel, who continues an impressive streak of performances in which he seems unable to muster interest in his own dialogue. Like his character, the actor simply pouts and women love him for it, but it’s difficult to buy him as either the wolf or the wounded lover when all he appears to be doing is looking for a better conversation.

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