Peppermint Soda

In the fall of 1963, Anne is becoming a teenager. She lives in Paris with her mother and her older sister, Frédérique. They’re just back from summer at the beach with their father. School starts. A turbulent year awaits them both. Writer-director Diane Kurys had worked as an actress for Fellini and others before growing sick of being told what to do by male directors uninterested in the inner lives of women and deciding to become a director herself. When Kurys wrote Peppermint Soda, her debut feature, she said that she had “never held a camera or even taken a still photograph before.” Yet her command of the camera here is that of a life-long natural: swift, precise, graceful. Kurys drew on her own experiences as a young girl, setting the film at the same lycée she attended and partially basing the characters on her real-life sister and herself. Kurys explains, “I wanted to show that it’s difficult to be a 13-year-old girl, to want something desperately even if it’s only a pair of pantyhose and to have nobody understand you.” A favorite film of Wes Anderson. 97 minutes.