A Tide in Your Heart and a Spring in Your Step

Charly (2007), the second feature film by Isild Le Besco, the French enfant sauvage who, according to Cris Marker, is the architect of the French new New Wave, which is closer to the naturalistic verism of the Dardenne brothers or the Romanian New Wave, is a story about growing up, about spring awakening. The latter is incidentally also Nicholas’ favourite literary work and as such the literary framework for his story. In line with Lukacs’ The Theory of the Novel, Nicholas longingly sets off on a journey to “paradise”, the island of Belle Île. He never reaches his destination; however, in his “detour”, he meets a young prostitute named Charly, who catapults him out of childhood and into the world of adults.

The integral (Slovenian) version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!