L’Atelier has a brilliant premise. A small group of mixed race teenagers from the Mediterranean town of Le Ciotat come together one summer for a writing workshop, helmed by the Parisian author, Olivia Dejazet, (Marina Foïs). The kids are supposed to create a thriller. They debate different ideas, touching on violence, history, race. One of them, Antoine (Matthieu Lucci) presents work which feels ultra violent. He provokes conflict with the second generation kids, from Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa. He’s a troublemaker, but he fascinates Olivia, who starts to investigate and discovers Antoine’s links to the far right. This set-up is highly effective, but the meta-drama between Olivia and Antoine starts to feel as though it pulls focus from the other kids’ story (and the fictional story they are creating). Their stories get lost, and the device, which seems ideal to explore the shape of French history over the course of the post-war period, feels as though it is sacrificed in order to explore Antoine’s neo-romantic radicalisation. It’s great to discover a film with the ambition and the wit to take on the issues L’Atelier does, but the resolution and enlace didn’t feel as though they quite lived up to these ambitions.
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