A few years ago in college, I took a French language course. It was more of an indulgent choice, filling time until I graduated. Considering how much I loved the French New Wave movement, I was eager to learn the language. I joked with the teacher that I was in the class so that I could watch the films without subtitles. Things kicked off from there, and soon I began my journey into my third language and the second that I only kind of know (ask me about my Spanish sometime!).
Besides the words, we had time to learn all about the culture and what their ideals were. Among the most striking details was the personal divide that French culture had with Russia. My teacher was Ukrainian, so she had that flippant attitude towards the country. Once she pointed it out, I began to see it everywhere, most notably (and obviously) in Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”
That is what made watching Peppermint Soda (1977) an interesting perspective. Maybe it was my lack of awareness of these details, but the story is inspired by the life of first-time filmmaker Diane Kurys and her sister. While she was born in France, her heritage was Russian-Jewish. I want to admit now that I don’t know everything that this entails, especially as an American Catholic. However, I began to see the film more in this divide that my French teacher had expressed prior.
Even when it wasn’t directly a political story, there were these details that Kurys had populated the frame with. The most direct divide came in the form of youth and establishment. The story focuses on the Weber sisters Anne (Eléonore Klarwein) and Frédérique (Odile Michel), two sisters at the Lycée Jules-Ferry. While bookended by trips to the beach with their father, most of the story takes place with their mother in the city. It’s where they can afford to get a good education, though anyone who has been through middle school will know that youth is wasted on the young.
Few details of the film feel as resonant to me as the feeling of being young and frustrated at the world. You don’t actually hate your teachers, but because of what they represent you feel oppressed by their power. You don’t want order, you want chaos. You love the girl who gets on her desk and yells. When she is sent before the board for potential expulsion, you just want to laugh. The consequences of actions are nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and the world is fun. You’re kids, and you will be forever.
I personally sympathize with Anne, who has a familiarity with my own experience that small moments become painful. Even if I was considered one of the best writers at my middle school, my grades were rather shoddy. I was in and out of detention with some regularity. The feeling of inadequacy is all too familiar, so having Mme. Weber (Anouk Ferjac) look at a grade sheet and chastise her daughter for underperforming is something I know. To be fair, I was rarely a dropout-worthy student, but those low grades – if you have a soul – eat at you and all that you can take from this interrogation is a quest to fly right.
Even if this story lacks a deeper narrative thesis, I think that Kurys framed this as the evolution of maturity. Getting bad grades and laughing in the schoolyard is only the start. It’s the divide between chaos and order, snickering at the head officials because you have to snicker at someone. It’s the simplest act and one that starts this sense of bonding among the girls at the school, who must stay together in order to survive. It’s why they go out to restaurants, bonding over a round of peppermint soda (even when it’s not the season). Even in moments of vulnerability, they begin to see how cruel the world is around them. Men leer at them and accuse them of thievery. The world is changing because their bodies are. Even when they’re deemed women, they’re still divided from the understanding of what this actually entails.
Peppermint Soda takes equal sentimentality towards both of the Weber sisters. Even with the few years dividing them, they share with each other a bond that nobody else can really understand. When their mom asks Frédérique to close the door to Anne’s room so that she can’t hear the radio, Frédérique leaves it open, knowing that she loves the music as much as they do. There is this small affection, where Frédérique warns Anne of the danger of staying out too late, doing her best to guide her to a life with far less reprimanding.
Then again, Anne can’ help but get into some trouble because of her own naïve youth. In one early scene, Anne is eager to update her fashion because she sees the other girls starting to look more mature. The idea of being nubile doesn’t please her and she goes about wanting panty-hose, which causes its own problem when she tries to hide this fact from her mother. Mme. Weber has her best interest, though you can tell that she’s concerned for her well-being, believing that she’s growing up too fast, not wanting her to pursue more romantic relationships. Even then, Frédérique and Anne work out a system to hide these letters from mom, taking in the joy of secrecy.
Whereas the first act focuses on this struggle of youth, there is a moment that defines an ultimate shift in the narrative. Peppermint Soda is so personal that it explores the menstruation process in great detail. Compared to American films of the time, it feels radical to ask a teenage girl if she’s had her period, then to present it as a series of obstacles at school. There is talk of cramps. Girls try to get out of class this way and in one comedic beat, someone gets caught doing this twice in one month. The whole thing is so personal that it even features a staggering scene whereupon joyfully telling her mom that she’s had her first period, Anne is slapped as an act of always having rosy cheeks. If you’ve never had this moment personally, it’s one that is jarring but reflects just how personal Kurys’ narrative is getting.
This is the divide. They are now women in the world, and the struggles suddenly become more than whether or not they get good grades. There is a form of self-consciousness that finally places it in the canon of French New Wave alongside personal works like The 400 Blows (1959), reflecting youth as this uncertain moment where we lash out not from anger but confusion. This is especially true in how the characters faun over American imports like The Great Escape (1963), or briefly recall the death of John F. Kennedy. There is this fascination with art that informs these characters. Frédérique eventually goes to art school because of this.
There is a candidness about the internal lives of characters, reflecting how the French identity has evolved and changed. Considering that Kurys is coming over a decade from these other masterpieces, it’s staggering to notice the small differences. Where male filmmakers like Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard idolize women as muses, it’s interesting to compare the female experience to Agnés Varda, who reflected something more candid and complex in films like Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961), showing that along with sexuality there was this universal vulnerability to aging and fading into irrelevance. It’s different for a woman because beauty is more ingrained in their decisions. They have unseen pressures that Godard couldn’t capture in any of his experimental titles.
Peppermint Soda is more in line with Varda’s technique, with a frankness that is at first staggering but ultimately truthful to the experience. These are natural experiences, so why is it so taboo to discuss in media? Kurys’ film is packed with these small moments that women have faced for decades, whether it’s feeling vulnerable when buying clothes, or trying to have an opinion taken seriously. While at the school, the Weber girls are constantly told not to get political. If the fascists interfere with their studies, mom will talk to the headmaster. Frédérique is quick to note just how pointless this decision is by saying that he’s an Anti-Semite.
Suddenly background details begin to pop up. To look at the school of Peppermint Soda is to notice something akin to Godard’s political works like Masculin Feminin (1966). The walls are sprayed with these messages, showing a rebellion that goes beyond simple disagreement over grades. Suddenly there are ideologies at stake and false agendas are spread. Frédérique has to convince her friends that “white slavery” is not a real thing and will openly deck a fascist who protests in front of her school. Suddenly her identity is more than a girl or woman, but activist or bystander.
One fight ends with the headmaster breaking through the fight to say that there shouldn’t be any political conversation at school, “especially from the girls.” This is one of those clever notes about how oppressed the female voice was in French culture, especially from girls who were seen as naïve. The bystanders said not to get political in order to maintain order, but it’s hard to not see that as leading to those fights, making fiction like “white slavery” accepted because it’s “common knowledge.” When going on a field trip, the Weber sisters discover a series of steps that nuns needed to climb on their knees and joyfully skip down. The pressures of being a woman have yet to sink in for them.
 |
| It also has one of the best movie posters ever |
The thing that feels satisfying about Peppermint Soda is that despite being formless, it quietly reflects how the female perspective has changed. There’s as much insecurity caused by those divides as there are moments that define them. This is a movie that treats discussion of menstruation as something joyous and normal. It’s one where women speak out against injustice. Even something like “white slavery” feels akin to the equally false modern trend of “reverse racism,” something that needs to be debunked. The only difference is that Peppermint Soda has the benefit of it coming from a childish conversation, of a mind that can be changed or set in stone. It’s one of those examples where a lack of open discussion about concepts can ultimately damage a person’s intellectual growth.
For a film that’s mostly about a year in school, it manages to hold these significant changes in how the Weber sisters see the world. There is joy and sadness, learning from mistakes, and becoming someone wiser in the process. It is seemingly innocent, lacking a deeper purpose, but it shows where all of these pivotal moments in our lives came from. It just happens to come from a time where the world is radically changing along with them.
I will confess that I wasn’t all that political in middle school. What I recognize from my own experience comes in the flippant decisions that we all make when we’re young and have no grasp of what the future looks like. What is lost if we decide to ditch school, or fall in love with older men? We don’t have any substantial reason to doubt that we’ll be all right. It’s that moment where innocence and a deeper danger begins to set in, and the film captures it beautifully. At the end of the day, there’s something relieving about having a sister to fall back on, having this person to turn to when the world feels like too much.
To be totally fair, I am a sucker for French New Wave films and find something comforting in how a film can explore an idea in artistic detail. I had no idea who Kurys was, but she immediately fit in with that aesthetic, managing to be far more open and vulnerable than any American counterpart that I’ve seen from that time. It’s in being honest that we get a coming of age story that is ultimately more honest. These are all themes that Godard explored in detail (sexuality, politics), but even he couldn’t write moments as personal as these. It’s charming, reflective of the life that’s not often seen on film in this way. This is a story about the divides in our life, where both sides cannot be fully pleased. We just have to decide where we want to end up.
Comments
Post a Comment