“This is the true story of Lucie, a dreamy 15-year-old girl. It’s a story of death, sex and disasters. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back and listen to this story…”declaims Justine Lacroix at the opening of Normalas his character embarks on writing his fantasized autobiography…
Since the death of her mother in a motorcycle accident, this 15-year-old girl has lived alone with her father William (Benoît Poelvoorde) in a small house. Shy, Lucie is nonetheless endowed with an overflowing imagination, which allows her to escape her not always rosy daily life. In college, she is not the most popular and secretly thinks of the handsome Étienne (Joseph Rozé), whose gaze turns rather to the minx of the class. To earn a few euros, she works in a sandwich shop, where she dreams of being discovered by a great American director. When she returns home, looking like a slum, she has to take care of her father, who is increasingly handicapped by multiple sclerosis. And to top it off, in a few days, a social worker must even arrive at their home to assess the situation and possibly have Lucie placed in a home…
Adolescence in crisis
Discovered with the unclassifiable series of capsules The Gizmo in the great Canal + era, Olivier Babinet continues, following the UFO fish sex in 2020, to cultivate his uniqueness with his new film, this time adapted from the play Hallway Monster (Monster in the Hall) by Scottish playwright David Greig.
Between fantasies and reality, Normal paints the portrait of a dreamy teenager who only has her imagination to embellish her painful daily life. It is on this tension that Olivier Babinet builds his whole film, on the border of several genres, sometimes realistic, sometimes flirting with the American high school film, even with the fantastic. What to give Normal an aspect of a tale, which fits perfectly with the theme of the film, which explores the psyche of a teenager. The age when we begin to seriously ask ourselves the question of who we are, of normality and of difference. And it is precisely by accepting her uniqueness that Lucie will succeed in finding her way…
The young Justine Lacroix (who we had discovered alongside Bouli Lanners in That’s love in 2019) stands up perfectly to Poelvoorde, in a role that is more serious than funny, in which the actor once once more proves to be very fragile. Both form an unexpected and endearing duo, which brings much of its charm to this quirky comedy.
Normal Drama Of Olivier Babinet Script Olivier Babinet, Juliette Sales and Fabien Suarez (from the play Hallway Monster by David Greig) Photography Jean-Francois Hensgens Musique Jean-Benoît Dunckel Montage Yorgos Lamprinos With Justine Lacroix, Benoît Poelvoorde, Joseph Rozé, Steve Tientcheu… Duration 1h27
