JEUNE JULIETTE

JEUNE JULIETTE is the simple story about a young girl leaving childhood behind her to start the long journey towards self-discovery and acceptance of her personality, image and beliefs. If many « coming-of-age » movies tell the hardship of becoming an adult, JEUNE JULIETTE focuses on the hardship of becoming a teenager.

« I’m looking forward to something, but I don’t know what », says Juliette to her dad, at the very beginning of the film. She therefore describes with eloquence but unconsciously this period of life so exciting though also terrifying. She doesn’t know what she will become, but she knows that she is looking forward to becoming it.

Juliette will live several experiences which will change her forever. She will understand how important other peoples’ opinion and glance can be. The child she is doesn’t even see that she is chubby, and therefore doesn’t see that other people notice it. The child she is can both beautifully and naively believe that this out-of-reach guy she’s in love with will soon love her back. The child she is can believe that her mother, who almost abandoned her, will warmly welcome her in New York.

The end of childhood is like stopping to believe in the impossible.

I did get somehow inspired by my childhood to write this script. I, myself, was pretty chubby from age 8 to 18 approximately. When I think about this period, two facts amuse me and seem interesting at the drama level. First, it’s only very late, when I was around 14, that I noticed the situation. Before that, at school, some pupil called me « fat Emond », I had never thought about my body, nor compared it to others’. I think that I simply never realized that I was overweight. This probably led me to the second interesting aspect of this story: being fat never impeded me from doing anything. I had a few girlfriends, but loyal and amazing ones. I was trying out every style, from hippie to gothic to punk rock: I was pretty audacious and felt good. I fell in love with boys who didn’t love me back in real life, but they triggered daydreams in me, and I lived « true imaginary stories » with them.

Juliette, despite her weight and her dissatisfactions, has everything to be happy: friends, a strong personality, a good family. She just needs to figure it out. This is the journey she takes in the movie. Rather than running for everything she can’t have, she learns to love what she has. She learns to accept who she is and those she loves, no matter how « different » they can be: lesbian, OCD, etc. Careful, she’s only 14, and won’t become wise by the end of the movie. She will grow up, sure, but will remain a young, bold, liar and insolent girl. So good at dreaming, Juliette won’t stop so early on, nor will she stop making her life more beautiful, nor lying, nor getting revenge.

JEUNE JULIETTE, I hope so, is a funny, colourful, endearing and somehow quirky movie, as its protagonists. It’s a movie which kindly depicts these teenage years when everything seems dramatic and essential while we would soon discover how beautiful and simple this period was. It’s a funny movie but not bland, nostalgic but not too heavy. And since we are talking about nostalgia, JEUNE JULIETTE makes a few references to my first favourite movies, from childhood, from L’EFFRONTE by Claude Miller to BREAKFAST CLUB by John Hugues.

Very rarely does cinema depicts female characters who love themselves and accept themselves as they are, despite their flaws. We need this, and on a personal note, I believe that I would have loved having access to some JEUNE JULIETTE-type movies when I was young. I hope that I have made a movie about the victory of singularity. The winners, the true heroes here, are not representative of the « norm », they are young people who are different and full of flaws but also with strong personalities. The bold chubby one, the androgynous skinny one, the gifted and anxious one. I am curious about them, and I expect a lot from them in the future.

Anne Emond