Graduate First

Maurice Pialat’s oft-overlooked chronicle of jaded adolescence unfolds in a small town in northern France where a group of teenagers stave off boredom and the looming responsibilities of adulthood by losing themselves in a reckless cycle of sex, drugs, and rebellion. Something of a companion to Pialat’s first feature, L’ENFANCE NUE, GRADUATE FIRST once again finds the director training his unflinching gaze on the dead-end youth of France with a heightened vérité immediacy that’s realer than realism.