Ithe 14 year old. The same age as Jean-Pierre Léaud during the filming of 400 Shots. And like him, he bursts the screen! Would Aliocha Reinert be the new Antoine Doinel? This kid from Nancy is on the bill of Small type, released in theaters on March 9. He interprets the role of Johnny, 10 years old, a child of CM2 evolving in a difficult environment: a single mother of three children, from three different unions. A mother with a serious alcohol addiction problem.
This environment forces Johnny to grow faster than the other students in his class. His primary school teacher quickly detects him and will try to help him. But the child misunderstands the feelings of this adult who offers him support lessons and tries to awaken him to the world of art… He will thus fall in love with his teacher. The subject was slippery, not to say scabrous! It is treated here with extreme delicacy by director Samuel Theis. Which, like François Truffaut (1932-1984), boldly assumes the autobiographical dimension of his work.
First steps
It is in Forbach, the city where he grew up and which he had already made the setting for his first feature film, Party Girl released in 2014, that this 43-year-old filmmaker shot his film. It was in 2019. For two years, he had been looking for an actor who might play this ambivalent role of a pre-adolescent who was both innocent and clever, incredibly mature, but, in many ways, very childish…
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Son of teachers, Aliocha Reinert had just turned 11 when he came across an ad posted on the walls of the Nancy dance conservatory. “It was indicated that a filmmaker was casting young boys for a film. I wanted to try the experiment”, he recalls today, while continuing his education in third year at the College de la Craffe, in the heart of the city of the Dukes of Lorraine. “Alyosha has an uncommon power of persuasion. He knew how to find the words to convince us to accompany him to Forbach”, smiles his father, Stéphane, 46, who accompanies him throughout the promotion of the film.A grueling shoot
The child won Theis following three tries. “Like an evidence,” says the filmmaker. Alyosha even made him reconsider his character’s look. “I think that initially he wanted a boy with short hair, but since I had it long, he adapted,” laughs Alyosha. Upon reading the script, however, her parents are choking. They are not certain of agreeing to have their son play the role of a child awakening to sensuality early on. “I remember very well when I received the script. We were in the spring of 2019, on the beach in Ostend. And I remember very exactly my reaction at that moment. I went through all the colors”, confides, with honesty, Stéphane Reinert, yet very open-minded.
“Because there is nothing ambiguous regarding Samuel Theis’ film; because Johnny’s teacher character is in no way a pedophile, we finally gave our consent, ”continues the father. However, with psychological support for the child, following three extremely intense months of filming. “We started the film at the end of the summer, because a scene was to be shot during the fairgrounds held in Forbach in August and we finished, on our knees, at the end of the year”, resumes Aliocha who then makes his comeback in fifth. “My year was quite disrupted,” he admits, without boasting.
star seed
Aliocha Reinert impresses the film crew with his professionalism, his talent for improvisation, but also his fearlessness. The experience constitutes, in his eyes, “an accelerator of life. “The child is impatiently awaiting the release on the big screen and is chomping at the bit when, because of the health crisis, he learns that it has been postponed for more than a year. “When I saw the result, at the Cannes Film Festival last May, I mightn’t believe my eyes. I had a hard time admitting that it was really me who was wandering around on the screen. The second time, I started to cry, because I was overwhelmed with emotion, just like my parents, I think. The third time, at the Festival de Valenciennes, I was finally attentive to the reactions of the public. I think this film can make people evolve on many subjects. Starting with homosexuality”, he completes with an unexpected seriousness for his age.
This feature film goes beyond the strict framework of the French social film in that it explores, beyond the difficulties of this family, the resources that Johnny mobilizes to get out of it. This work explores, in parallel, intimate questions rarely addressed in cinema. On the strength of this experience, Aliocha will do a supporting role in a short film (“a period film”, he summarizes) and do the voice-over for a documentary on the daily life of children during the Second World War for art. He now only dreams of shooting once more. “I now have an agent and I’m waiting for the castings,” he says calmly. Justine Thiriet auditioned him for his next film, “but Aliocha was a little too big for the role”, points out his father.
“I am aware that I am moving towards a very precarious profession and that it is not at all certain that I will succeed in breaking through, but I believe in my lucky stars, and that it is in dance, where I explore now a more contemporary repertoire, in the theater or in the cinema, I know that I am made to create roles”, concludes Aliocha with tremendous aplomb. His 18-year-old older brother, for his part, turned to business studies. He does not intend to follow in his footsteps. His parents push him to continue his studies all the same until his baccalaureate. For the moment, the teenager complies. But, in his heart of hearts, he dreams of a Vincent Lacoste career. “My idol… with Jean-Paul Rouve,” he concludes.
*Small type, by Samuel Theis. With Aliocha Reinert, Antoine Reinartz, Izïa Higelin. 95 mins.