Edition: U.S. / Global

For the Youth of France, 'un Teen Movie' of Their Own

Published: February 3, 2002

FRENCH movies have always had such a grown-up attitude about sex even their coming-of-age stories, so unlike the blushing, gag-filled comedies favored by Hollywood. So when the new English-titled French movie ''Sexy Boys'' featured a young guy stealing a moment of ecstasy in a pile of hot spaghetti, the French media immediately dubbed it ''American Pie à la française'' -- ''un teen movie'' with ''une French touch.''

The French have grown up watching American films, and now a new generation of filmmakers has begun making the kinds of movies they love. Producer-driven (rather than auteur-driven) movies like Luc Besson's action-packed ''Taxi'' series have taken on the American blockbuster. Last year, Hollywood-style special effects enhanced hit movies like ''Amélie'' and ''Brotherhood of the Wolf'' (while the entire budget of the typical French movie is smaller than the special-effects budget of a Hollywood studio action film). And now, encouraged by its success with the first ''American Pie'' movie in France, Pathé Distribution has taken on that staple of American culture, le teen movie.

French filmmakers have often made movies about adolescence -- from François Truffaut's 1959 classic, ''The 400 Blows,'' to the 1980 ''La Boum'' (which introduced Sophie Marceau) to the 2000 movie ''Du Poil Sous les Roses'' (''Hair Under the Roses''), which drew some less-pointed comparisons to the first ''American Pie'' for its ''raw'' treatment of teenage sexuality. But the French have rarely made movies for adolescents.

''Sexy Boys,'' by the first-time writer-director Stéphane Kazandjian, was filmed without name actors for a medium-size French budget of about $3 million, and it has sold nearly 500,000 tickets since it opened on Dec. 26, far from the more than three million racked up by ''American Pie 2'' but a respectable showing for a film by an unknown French director in a country where American movies still dominate the box office.

The young man who showed France that Americans were not the only ones who could produce a successful gross-out teenage comedy is a curly haired Parisian of 29. Wearing dark-rimmed glasses and clean clothes and speaking a French littered with the franglais his generation has learned from American movies and television, Mr. Kazandjian held forth recently at Les Philosophes, a popular watering hole in the Marais. ''I think there's a kind of 'snobbisme' in France,'' Mr. Kazandjian said. ''To make a film for an adolescent audience is considered vulgar, idiotic -- because we are so much more intelligent than the Americans -- and if we make a film for young people, it has to really raise the debate. All of the films I've seen in France about adolescents are made by 40-year-olds recalling adolescence as a troubled, tormented period.''

In lowering the debate with spaghetti-assisted masturbation and other shenanigans related to bodily functions, Mr. Kazandjian said he had been inspired by more than the equivalent culinary sex scene in ''American Pie.''

''Le teen movie didn't begin with 'American Pie,' '' he said. ''There was the 1980's, 'Porky's,' the films of John Hughes. My references were really more 'Ferris Bueller' and the films of Kevin Smith. The noodles are actually a reference to a scene in 'Clerks.' ''

What, then, about the first scene, in which, à la ''American Pie,'' the opening credits fade into loud panting and a young man getting caught with his hands in his pants? ''That's much more a reference to 'Porky's,' '' the soft-spoken Mr. Kazandjian said, somewhat incredulously. ''But nobody remembers 'Porky's.' '' Anyway, Mr. Kazandjian insisted, ''Sexy Boys'' is really much more ''There's Something About Mary'' than ''American Pie.''

Still, Mr. Kazandjian acknowledged that without the success of ''American Pie'' in France, le teen movie à la française might not have begun with ''Sexy Boys.''

''Before 'American Pie,' no one would have believed that a French 'film de teenager' could have worked in France,'' Mr. Kazandjian said of his feel-good teenage buddy movie. ''It bugs me that everyone finds it normal that 'American Pie 2' sold 3 million tickets here, and then we say, 'Sexy Boys' did 500,000, that's totally great.' But in a way I understand. When I was 15, I wanted to see American films because I felt there was nothing in French films for me. I think in the heads of young French kids, the French cinema is for their parents.''

Mr. Kazandjian said that he had always dreamed of making a movie in the United States, and he has made several trips since he first visited a relative in Sacramento at the age of 12. After graduating from business school, he lived in New York for six months and also did a summer internship on a short-lived sitcom in Los Angeles. But after failing to capture anyone's attention in Hollywood with his first two scripts -- English-language thrillers modeled on James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard -- he returned to France and realized, he said, that Hollywood wasn't the only place to make the American-style movies he admired.