Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: February 3, 2002
(Page 2 of 2)

Perhaps inevitably, French critics held ''Sexy Boys'' up against its American predecessors. Le Monde wrote in a review on opening day: ''Perhaps we should, out of the charity of the season, not reveal the names of the young actors,'' dismissing ''Sexy Boys'' as an inferior imitation of ''American Pie.'' It was Libération that called it ''un teenage movie à la française that doesn't equal 'American Pie,' its model,'' going on to say that the characters were washed out by ''a total Americanization of behaviors and settings.'' A reviewer on French Yahoo called it ''a pathetic attempt at commercial recycling,'' a ''film-suppository'' with the ''secret ambition'' to outdo its American equivalent in tasteless humor.

But Mr. Kazandjian insisted that he began writing ''Sexy Boys'' in 1997, before ever seeing ''American Pie.'' And he seemed a little wounded that French critics had failed to notice -- despite its being patterned on an American genre -- just how French it is. For example, he said, he didn't try to turn a French lycée into an American-style high school. Mr. Kazandjian's characters aren't virgins and they've already received their diplomas. Seb (Julien Baumgartner) is a 20-year-old journalism student who falls for Lucie (Armelle Deutsch), a single mother; his pal Manu (Matthias Van Khache) is a stoner who works in a clothing store when he's not trying desperately to cheat on his longterm girlfriend; Franck (Jérémie Elkaïm) is a romantic who, after a failed crush, takes a not very politically correct part-time job acting in pornographic movies and turns into a raging alcoholic, vomiting in the middle of a job interview.

''I have the impression that there's a kind of refusal of people to think about the film,'' he said, ''to just reduce it to this spaghetti scene that's just like 'American Pie.' Very few reviews looked at the film on its own terms, not just as 'American Pie' 'à la française.' And that's disappointing. In 'American Pie,' that scene lasts 1 minute 10 seconds. In my film the sequence lasts 10 minutes.'' And, he pointed out, the adulterated spaghetti is served to Seb's friends (who question him on the secret ingredient in the delicious new sauce) and later causes his girlfriend to leave him temporarily.

''When I saw 'American Pie,' I thought it was funny that they never ask whether or not they're going to be able to perform the first time -- it's just, 'We have to do it,' '' he said. ''Those kinds of questions are the base of 'Sexy Boys.' Seb's convinced he is smaller than average; Manu thinks he needs to get involved with lots of girls; Franck thinks he's going to marry a girlfriend who doesn't exist. These are masculine anxieties. 'Sexy Boys' is more about finding yourself, and I wanted to put those psychoanalytical elements of Woody Allen in a teen movie.''

But audiences might have an easier time spotting the more obvious crosscultural references: the little sister who wears T-shirts that say things like ''70's Soul Party'' and spends her allowance at the record store buying ''le nouveau Britney.''

''There is a real French culture and a real American culture and between the two there is 'un melting pot' with many references that everyone has in common,'' Mr. Kazandjian said. ''Everyone is nourished by the things they grew up with, and my generation saw Spielberg in the same way that Scorsese saw Godard's 'Breathless' and started making little films in black and white. I'm interested in this space between 'la culture trash' and respectable culture. In France we really have this cult of the auteur, as if he's a kind of genius. But I don't really think there are more masterpieces in the French cinema than there are in the American cinema.''

Mr. Kazandjian said his favorite filmmakers are the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson, and that he would love to have Steven Soderbergh's career. ''American movies have a real energy that I think is missing in a lot of French films,'' he said. He recently helped write another movie, called (again in English) ''Bloody Mallory,'' which he described as ''a sort of Buffy française, an action comedy based on Roger Corman-style B movies.'' He is now writing a romantic comedy, ''très Hollywoodienne,'' he said. ''I would really like to find a middle ground between Woody Allen and Billy Wilder.''

As it happens, ''Sexy Boys'' received its best notice in the United States, from the trade paper Variety, Mr. Kazandjian said. The American reviewer Lisa Nesselson, a longtime Paris resident, wrote: ''Shot and edited with straightforward efficiency, film has guts and energy as well as grossout ideas to spare. However, the tone is nearly wholesome and surprisingly romantic.''

Right up, as the French would say, to ''le happy end.''

Photos: In the French movie ''Sexy Boys,'' from left, Armelle Deutsch, Jérémie Elkaïm, Virginie Lanoue, Matthias Van Khache and Julien Baumgartner. (Delante Films)(pg. 1); Stéphane Kazandjian, director of ''Sexy Boys,'' on the set. (Delante Films); In ''American Pie,'' Jim (Jason Biggs) dances his way to manhood as his Dad (Eugene Levy) looks on. (Randy Tepper/Universal Studios)(pg. 21)