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WILD CAMP
Written & Directed by: Christophe Ali & Nicolas Bonilauri.
Produced by: Tom Dercourt.
Director of Photography: Jérôme Peyrebrune.
Edited by: Laurent Roüan.
Music by: Nicolas Baby & Dan Levy.
Released by: LifeSize Entertainment.
Language: French with subtitles in English & Spanish.
Country of Origin: France. 79 min. Not Rated.
With: Doug Lavant, Isild Le Besco, Pascal Bongard, Yann Trégouët, Raphaelle Mezrahi & Emmanuelle Bercot.
DVD Features: Trailer.

Besides being a cliché, it would be unfair to author Vladimir Nabokov to call 17-year-old Camille (Isild Le Besco) another Lolita. Lolita was bursting with complex reasons for her sexual encounters with older men. Jodie Whittaker’s Jessie in last year’s Venus used sex to get ahead and to boost her self-esteem. Same with Mini in 2006’s Mini’s First Time. Camille, however, is just bored.

Her parents have parked their trailer at a campsite in the French countryside for the summer. Camille turns to sex as a way to pass the time, and when odd, awkward, but otherwise unremarkable Blaise (Denis Lavant) arrives as the new maintenance man, she relishes in the opportunity to have another activity besides swimming, tanning, and smoking cigarettes.

Camille has the typical teenage tendency to center the universe around herself and, in one of the movie’s rare moments of interest, she appears in front of a mirror chanting, “I’m Camille and I’m special” over and over like a My So-Called Life mantra. Blaise’s exact age is never mentioned, but he’s easily 20 years her senior. He’s also married with a newborn infant. And Camille has a jealous boyfriend who works the camp’s bar, so it’s clear from the start this relationship is going to ruffle some feathers. The tragic ending to their month-long fling is inevitable, and the relationship’s deranged undertone turns from a boring to a disturbing cliché when Camille, who has basically just met Blaise, proclaims their “love was not meant for this earth.”

Neither of the lead actors really enlivens their dour roles that, to be fair, never had much depth anyway, due to the writer/director duo Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri’s mediocre dialogue and an overall tedious and predictable concept. (If you don’t know how it’s going to end after the first half-hour, you’re probably Amish and don’t watch movies as a strict rule). However, Jérôme Peyrebrune’s cinematography is beautiful, with scenes of Camille sitting beside a lake, campers blithely absorbed in leisurely middle-class nothingness, and synthetic fiber tents lit up from the inside at night. Zachary Jones
February 28, 2007