The Friends [Les Amis] *** (1971, Yann Favre, Philippe March, Jean-Claude Dauphin, Nathalie Fontaine) – Classic Movie Review 13,764

Yann Favre stars as Paul, a teenage aspiring actor, who is having a gay relationship with middle-aged married businessman Philippe (Philippe March), in Gérard Blain’s 1971 French romantic coming-of-age drama film The Friends [Les Amis].

Co-writer/ director Gérard Blain’s 1971 French romantic coming-of-age drama film The Friends [Les Amis] won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. Yann Favre stars as Paul, a 16-year-old aspiring actor, who is having a gay relationship with middle-aged married businessman Philippe (Philippe March), a calming reassuring presence, well-off, smooth and confident. Paul looks calm and confident too, but that’s not who he is at all. The two set off together on a trip to Deauville in Normandy, north-western France, in Philippe’s sports car and check into a luxury hotel.

The Friends [Les Amis] is perhaps not a particularly appealing or exciting film, but it is quite mesmerising, with plenty of rich Deauville seaside resort atmosphere, both outside and indoors, and brilliant cars of the period too. Deauville is quite a character in the drama. It always pays to set your film in somewhere interesting and get your cameras out and about.

It takes what could be an incendiary subject and plays it very calmly, with dignity. It is a cool, chilly, rather elusive and unresolved drama, running like a Chabrol film without the murders. Come to think of it, a murder or two might cheer things up a bit. It isn’t a very cheerful film. Was it controversial at the time? It might still raise the odd eyebrow.

Yann Favre is wonderfully sad and sulky as Paul, a little boy lost, ready to latch on to anyone who would help him or love him, or just be kind to him. He’s an open book for anyone to read, which makes him very vulnerable. He’s 16, and needs to grow up fast, or else he’s in trouble. Gérard Blain has picked the ideal boy as Paul, and Yann Favre gives the role everything.

Paul finds one true friend among all the people he meets in Deauville, Nicolas (Jean-Claude Dauphin), to whom he tells everything, though Nicolas has suspected it all already. He’s right to trust Nicolas. He is a real friend. The women in the film don’t come out very well: Paul’s awful, uncaring mother (Dany Roussel), and Marie-Laure (Nathalie Fontaine), the seaside sex siren, blonde, blue-eyed and lovely, but a useless friend, to whom Paul declares love (of course he’s not really in love with her, but tells himself he is).

Somehow Paul remains sympathetic, which may mostly be to do with the way Yann Favre is able to play him. Philippe is sympathetic, too, the boy’s ‘godfather’, busy but endlessly kind, caring, thoughtful and patient with the kid, also nicely played by the actor. There’s no impression that Philippe is using Paul, and none that Paul is using Philippe. Is it love? Who knows?

Considering its age and era, the film is still relevant and has aged gracefully. Incredibly inappropriate music plays at incredibly inappropriate moments (also over the credits), agreed, but the film has style and class. The shooting style and editing are of their time and place, but they impress. The film impresses too. No messages, no statements, no exploitation, no sex (though the film is very interested in it), nothing earth shattering, but really quite involving, oddly.

Directed by Gérard Blain.

Written by Gérard Blain, André Debaecque.

Cast: Philippe March as Philippe, Yann Favre as Paul, Jean-Claude Dauphin as Nicolas, Nathalie Fontaine as Marie-Laure, Dany Roussel as La mère de Paul, Claude Larcher as Béatrice, Hélène Zanicolli as Monique, Christian Chevreuse as Maître Manège, Martin Pierlot as Jean-Marc, Liliane Valais as La mère de Marie-Laure, Vincent Gauthier as Olivier.

Gérard Blain (23 October 1930 – 17 December 2000) was a French actor who appeared in 60 films between 1944 and 2000 and directed nine films between 1971 and 2000. He married three times, including briefly to Bernadette Lafont.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,764

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