This film is a hidden gem for the lovers of various French traditions: epistolary literature of 17th and 18th century, the breeze of French philosophy of love, friendship and education,, view at old traditional environment of Parisian schools mixed with contemporary teaching styles, love intrigues and tragic resolutions, etc. Without knowing its French context, its difficult to grasp the charm of this movie. Love relations are mostly temporary, no matter how intense they were. Still, in all that mess, from time to time, someone is always ready to die or to kill for it. That is the substance of French literature, art, philosophy, and its always over and over joy to observe it, in cinematic works like this. Especially with two eye-candies such as Lea Seydoux and Luis Garrel, who at the same time, happen to be good actors. Two songs played in French fit very well the movie, the other songs sung in English were actually total misfit. French film for the French culture lovers. Recommended for calm rainy afternoons.

..yea.. she's a real winner... ..she teases and torments her 'friend' to his ultimate demise.. ..and with her other love interest, she feels very strongly about him, but must leave and go far, far away... for he is just too beautiful, and although he proclaims he loves her, in the end she knows he will ultimately leave her for another.. ..(and who decided to cast him in that role.. at times he looks and acts more like a student than they do).. ..all that, and a bunch of confusing side story lines, adding nothing at all to the main story.. ..the French have mastered these kinds of productions.. too bad in this one the efforts of a good number of talented young actors went to waste

Christopher Honoré's La belle personne is a compelling curiosity; transposing the courtly world of Madame de La Fayette's classic 17th century story, La Princess de Cleves to a modern-day French lyceé (with its own courtyard), the film is a compelling observation of "courtly" love in a postmodern world; although it would be convincing to argue La belle personne is not very modern in its presentation of present-day bourgeoise Parisian etudiants. This is a world that exists in its own hermetically-sealed bubble, free from Facebook and the internet. It's a world where 60s navel-gazing reigns supreme.The film follows the tribulations love brings, or perhaps more realistically, the tribulations of what one perceives as 'love', even if it's unconsummated. The title alludes to 17-year-old Junie (Léa Seydoux), whose aura and presence recalls a ghostly incarnation of Godard's muse Anna Karina (Perhaps a self-conscious homage to Godard by the FEMIS-teaching Honoré?). Following the death of her mother, Junie refuses to live with her father (for unknown reasons), choosing instead to live with her cousin, Mathias, in a haute-bourgeoisie Parisian arrondisement close to the school she and Mathias attend. ' Soon enough Junie becomes the default objet d'amour for the male etudiants, namely love-sick Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) at first. However, she soon troubles the cad-in-school Italian teacher, Nemours (the lanky yet ever-foppish Louis Garrel) with her otherworldly presence, prompting him to quickly end two amorous entanglements with a middle-aged fellow teacher and a stubborn 16-year-old female student. However, as one would expect fron the source material, tragedy foreshadows this story but it does not detract from this near-perfect made-for-TV drama. Every performance is realistic and natural. Special kudos to Garrel and Sedoyx for their work here. Honore follows the mis-step that was Chansons D'amour with this elegant, masterfully composed concoction; even if you could argue La belle personne seems to be an inverse reworking of Chansons. With the ensemble of regulars (Garrel, Hesme, Mastroianni, Leprine-Ringuet etc), traversing both films, La belle personne perversely feels like a sequel somehow taking place in a parallel world to Chansons. In spite of some questionable if strained directorial nods to the Nouvelle Vague (mentioning them would spoil the end), Honoré shows restraint and an uncharacteristic sense of detachment. The way he directs Seydoux is a revelation. Her ghostly presence haunts the film in every aspect and should be noted as a performance of great integrity and resolve from this promising actress. As a modern-day exploration of courtly love, La belle personne, is worth seeing numerous times to catch the many subtleties it withholds on first viewing.

For a TV film, Christophe Honoré's 'La Belle personne' is elegant and allusive. It's a rethinking of Madame de Lafayette's' 17th-century classic 'La Princesse de Clèves' for Paris lycée classroom and courtyard--which may make you think of the way de Laclos' 'Dangerous Liaisons' was adapted to an American high school in Roger Kumble's 1999 'Cruel Intentions.' Honoré makes use of the fact that the good looks of youth confer a kind of nobility, high school cliques resemble court life, and teenage machinations aren't far from royal plots. The "beautiful person" (a phrase from the book) is any youth from a good family in a fashionable school. The director features Louis Garrel, himself clearly a "beautiful person," for a fourth time. The way he slips in appearances by Clotilde Hesme and Chiara Mastroianni and a tragic main role for Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, all from the director's musical film 'Love Songs,' with one song included, makes you feel like the director is playing off his own company of players. As the self-centered seducer Nemours, Garrel, himself part of a French cinematic dynasty (his father and grandfather are both film icons), gets movie royalty for his love interest. Léa Seydoux, who plays the central female, lycée newcomer Junie, is a direct descendant of scions of the two great houses of French cinema, Gaumont and Pathé. Garrel is dreamier than Truffaut's alter ego Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud). More than ever he seems Honoré's muse, his classic young Parisian boulevardier, flaneur, seducer. It's s all beginning to seem at bit inbred (but what genes!). On top of that former 'Cahiers du Cinéma' writer Honoré, not surprisingly, as before, slips in illusions to the Nouvelle Vague, especially Godard.If this sounds interesting, even classic, but emotionally a bit uninvolving, that's pretty much true. There's some titillation (but not much sex), long kisses, and a chance to look up close at beautiful boy and girl faces. For complication, as before with Honoré, a gay affair is woven in as if it were the most natural thing in the world (though this time there is also a great effort to hide it). But while the director's 'Dans Paris' lurched back and forth between hilarity (embodied in Louis Garrel) and deep melancholy (hovering over Romain Duris) and in 'Love Songs' a sudden death clouded everyone else's life, this time the teenage passions, ostensibly mortal, feel more superficial, and Nemours, who is involved with a woman teacher and a girl student at the film's start, barely shows a flicker of concern about his multiple affairs and broken hearts apart from the worry that they might get too messy. So the film may be a pleasure to look at; it may even provide the vicarious pleasure of imagining life at a snooty Paris high school; but the sweetness and sublime gloom of 'Love Songs' and 'Dans Paris' are now more fleeting and peripheral, replaced by machinations it's somewhat difficult to keep track of.When Junie arrives at mid-term, her life disrupted due to the death of her mother, all eyes turn toward her sultry pout. One boy snaps photos of her. Nemours, not so much older than his charges, ostensibly teaches them Italian--not very seriously, it seems. This school lacks the ghetto intensity shown in Cantet's 'The Class' or the elite-school rigor of Verheyde's 'Stella.' Nemours purveys Italian by setting up a field trip to Italy (which falls through), having pop song lyrics read and translated, and allowing a student to play a record of Callas singing Lucia, causing him and Junie to fall for each other when Junie weeps and rushes out, leaving behind her photo-portrait for Nemours to grab and stash away.Then comes the misplaced love-note, which gets very complicated, and leads to a revelation at a Métro stop about boys loving boys. Otto feels betrayed, though on the basis of another boy's mistaken observation. Why does Junie give him a children's book called 'Otto'? Why does he wear a big sheepskin coat all the time, while the other kids wear lighter, hipper outfits, and Nemours' ensembles are like Hedi Slimane, only better? There are bits of guys playing basketball, scenes in a local café with a tough, motherly patronne; and the flashbacks have an appealingly blurry Nouvelle Vague look. We are talking style over substance here, but not exclusively. As in 'Dangerous Liaisons,' those who suffer elegantly stil suffer. And Honoré's relatively weak grasp on what happens in the classroom can't detract from his ability to convey with some vitality the snippy-chic atmosphere in the hallways, and the quick devastation of a teen romance gone wrong (the original 'Princesse de Clèves,' by the way, was fifteen).Thanks largely Alex Beaupain's songs, Honoré's 'Chansons d'amour' captured a bittersweet melancholy that perfectly fit the gray winter season in the Bastille quarter of Paris where it was set. This time the director has created a different atmosphere, lighter and noisier--but emotionally less engaging. But he has by no means lost touch with his Parisian milieu or his cast of attractive people. This is still a film that will be worth seeing again. Some of it flits by too fast to take in the first time.Working on the adaptation with Gilles Taurand (who wrote Téchiné's excellent 'Strayed'), Honoré has shown a light touch and is working in a consistent vein that is ever more Parisian and urbane, ever more "Dans Paris." Except for "Comme la pluie" sung by Otto (Leprince-Riinguet), this film has no songs by Honoré's 'Love Songs' collaborator, Alex Beaupain. Instead it is peppered with musical numbers and the songs of Nick Drake. Not part of the Rendez-Vous, though it might have been, 'La Belle personne' opened theatrically at BAMcinématek March 6 as kind of followup of a 2007 series there called "Generation Garrel," which provided a sneak preview of 'Dans Paris.' 'La Belle personne' has been bought for US distribution by IFC Films. It played in the London and San Sebastian film festivals.