05/08/2023 - Romain de Saint-Blanquat’s first feature film depicts the tribulations and agonising obsessions of an extraordinary adolescent

Presented in a world premiere within the Locarno Film Festival’s Cineasti del Presente line-up, young French director Romain de Saint-Blanquat’s debut feature film Bitten [+see also:
trailer
interview: Romain de Saint-Blanquat
film profile] whisks us back in time to the rebellious Sixties and, more specifically, to Mardi Gras of 1967. We’re guided on our journey, protected by the darkness of a seemingly never-ending night, by seventeen-year-old Françoise (the magnetic Léonie Dehan-Lamort), a pupil in a Catholic school populated by fanatic nuns, and her friend Delphine (an intense Lilith Grasmug), a rational alter ego, of sorts, who tries to save Françoise from a seemingly imminent end, for Françoise is convinced that she only has one more night to live, and she intends to savour it in dangerously intense fashion, guided solely by her instincts and the insatiable curiosity of adolescence. Determined to break up the oppressive monotony of the boarding school which they’re “locked up” in, the two protagonists decide to break out in order to meet up with a group of youngsters who have organised a party in an abandoned villa in the woods.

Buoyed by a perfect Sixties-style soundtrack, the images depicting Françoise and Delphine’s fateful night worm their way under our skin, reminding us that rather than wasting the present, we should live it with maximum intensity and with the tantalising recklessness of youth. Bitten is a film where the protagonist’s emotion reign supreme, emotions so intense they verge on incandescent. Skilfully playing on opposites - the nuns who try to turn faith into fanaticism versus the two protagonists’ thirst for rebellion (Françoise’s first and foremost), and Delphine’s search for normality versus Françoise’s craving for anarchy - Romain de Saint-Blanquat wants us to share in the inner upheaval inherent with discovering a world both fascinating and dangerous, a world you can lose yourself in to the point of stupefaction.

An explosive mix of Dario Argento-style horror (the protagonist’s schoolgirl attire is surprisingly reminiscent of the outfits worn by the boarding-school dancers in Suspiria), vintage-tinged coming-of-age tale and alchemical poetry, akin to the kind experienced in Philippe Garrel’s emblematic movies She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps and Wild Innocence (the scene where the youngsters are dancing together in a fit of cathartic release is particularly symbolic), Bitten makes us believe in the revolutionary power of youth and in the need to experience life rather than dreaming about it, seeing ourselves in its light with the knowledge we might get burned.

Aside from being an ode to carefreeness and the first pangs of agony, Romain de Saint-Blanquat’s debut film is also a cruel and captivating portrait of two girls defying the conventions of their time. The dominant force in this pair of rebels - a watered-down, yé-yé-flavoured version of the heroines in John Waters’ Female Trouble – is Françoise, a mysterious and cutting (anti)heroine who doesn’t know what to make of overwhelmingly heteropatriarchal rules. Determined to discover herself and the darker sides of her complex personality which she wears with pride, the protagonist of Bitten doesn’t need a man in order to exist, unlike in many other films about adolescence where men “educate” women on life. What she wants is to impose her own rules, to shape reality based on her own intense emotions. And this in itself is already a great revolution.

Bitten is produced by French firm Easy Tiger with world sales entrusted to Films Boutique.

(Translated from Italian)