Christophe Honoré falls back into adolescence and reveals a great actor in The high school student. This poignant autobiographical film looks back on the trauma suffered by the filmmaker after the death of his father in a car accident when he was 17 years old. Juliette Binoche and Vincent Lacoste play the hero’s mother and older brother, while the director appears briefly in the role of his own father. But it’s Paul Kircher, an incandescent discovery that steals the show in the title role. Remember this name!
“I know I’m privileged to have filmed Paul Kircher when he was barely 20 years old and still carried within him expressions of childhood”, explains Christophe Honoré in the press kit. The director gave auditions to more than three hundred young people before discovering the rare pearl, a young actor vibrant with vital force who agrees to lay himself bare in every sense of the word.
Dark but hopeful
We find as much tenderness as anger in this teenager who is ready to do many sometimes dangerous stupid things to forget his grief and ward off the unbearable injustice of an unexpected death. Christophe Honoré had already spoken of his life with To please, to love and to run fast and especially the beautiful room The Sky of Nantes where he talked about his family. He dives even deeper into his painful past which is embodied in the person of a remarkable young actor. The high school student would not be such a success without the presence of Paul Kircher, whose dazzling talent illuminates this dark but hopeful film for a director who has established himself as a multi-talented artist.