Marilyn Monroe's School For French Girls
2016 · 10m · USA
Directed by Courtney Bush, Will Carington, Jake Goicoechea
Tones: tender, theatrical, whimsical
Friends gather at the beach for a birthday and slip into an elaborate roleplay as students at a French boarding school. Handheld, naturalistic, hovering somewhere between performance and real life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Three directors and a beach house — that's normally my cue to leave. But the title alone earns a look, and the whole thing dares you to figure out where the bit ends and the friendship begins.
Sustained mumblecore-meets-improv roleplay where the fiction inside the fiction IS the whole movie — that's a structurally interesting risk that could be Rohmer-by-way-of-slumber-party magic.
Sustained mumblecore-meets-improv roleplay where the fiction inside the fiction is the whole movie — the 'how much is real, how much are we making up' question doing structural work. Trust the slumber-party aesthetic.
Reviews
The performances feel grounded yet spontaneous, and the camaraderie is believable.