My Life With James Dean [Ma vie avec James Dean] **** (2017, Johnny Rasse, Mickaël Pelissier, Nathalie Richard, Juliette Damiens, Tancredi Volpert, Marie Vernalde, Bertrand Belin, Yannick Bequelin, Julien Graux) – Classic Movie Review 13,681

Johnny Rasse stars as a young movie director invited to present his first feature film My life with James Dean in a small seaside town in Normandy, in this charming and funny 2017 French comedy film.

Johnny Rasse stars as the young, early twenties film director called Géraud Champreux, who is invited to present his first feature film My life with James Dean in a small seaside town in Normandy, and has no idea that this little film tour is about to change his life.

The town has only one cinema, hidden away in the casino, and not many cinema-goers, so woeful screenings then. The star of Géraud’s film, Ludwig Mandel (Tancredi Volpert), who is also his boyfriend, hasn’t bothered to turn up. They are having time off, apparently. The locals aren’t exactly friendly, a kid has gleefully nicked the hero’s cellphone, and the woman who’s organising the screenings, Sylvia van den Rood (Nathalie Richard), is a flake, a nice one, but a total flake. She’s having girlfriend problems.

The girl on the reception counter at his hotel, Gladys (Juliette Damiens), is a bit of a flake too. She’s busy learning Chekov’s play The Seagull in her quest to become an actress, and maybe get in Géraud’s next film. And the very tall boy on the tickets at the cinema counter, Balthazar (Mickaël Pelissier), falls instantly in love with Géraud on the basis of seeing his film, also called My life with James Dean.

Against all odds, hangdog hero Géraud ends up finding inspiration for a new film, of course, as well as a few new good friends, and maybe a new boyfriend too, maybe not. We’ll see.

My Life with James Dean [Ma vie avec James Dean] is blessed with a sparkling script, and is a quirky and amusing and exceptionally sweet one-off comedy. It is weird in a good way. This is hard to pull off, but writer / director Dominique Choisy knows what he is doing, continually hitting the right notes.

I suppose it’s unfair to say the humour is very French. But then the film makes huge capital out of its French locations and stereotypes. It does turn caricatures into flesh and blood characters too, though, another tough trick for a comedy. It doesn’t put a foot wrong or run out of steam, in fact it’s a frantic rush to the happy ending. It speaks for optimism and a warm heart, but gently and quite quietly, though immensely persuasively, and, yes, quirkily.

All the performances are totally winning. A lot depends on Johnny Rasse and Mickaël Pelissier being appealing, and they are, but so in their various different ways are the rest of the cast. Their characters could be infuriating, but they are not, just the opposite.

Did I say the film is amusing? It is but maybe I should say it is funny, sometime laugh out loud funny. It’s also charming, and charm is a scarce commodity nowadays. There’s a lot of film and cinema stuff of course, well mined. The film itself is well honed. It looks very smart and stylish. I fell for it, just like the boy falls for the film director. Neat that, eh?

It looks from the film’s title as though it’s going to be a biopic of James Dean, but, though shameless extensive capital is made out of the Fifties movie star (amusing though), that just proves a catchy title for the film, the two films of course.

Cast: Johnny Rasse as Géraud Champreux, Mickaël Pelissier as Balthazar, Nathalie Richard as Sylvia van den Rood, Juliette Damiens as Gladys, Tancredi Volpert as Ludwig Mandel, Marie Vernalde as Louise, Bertrand Belin as Maxence, Yannick Bequelin as Jimmy, Julien Graux as Tony.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,681

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