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Homeboys at the Beach
France 1998
Reviewed by Chris Darke
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
St Denis, the Paris suburbs, 1992. Four young friends - Youssef, Stéphane, Christophe and Mike - make a video report about life in the suburbs and win a three-week holiday in Biarritz. Four days after arriving they've run out of money. Three Parisian girls arrive at the apartment next door and one of them, Lydie, asks Youssef to fix a faulty electrical circuit. When she comes on to him Youssef is excited but nervous. Mike, the subject of the report, who wasn't invited, arrives unexpectedly. The boys soon realise their plans to pick up girls will be helped by Mike's car.
The boys challenge Christophe to chat up a local girl, Christelle, which he does, getting her phone number. But when he tries to call her later he can't reach her. On the beach Youssef and Stéphane persuade the dim-witted Mike to chat up a beautiful girl whom they insist is a prostitute accompanied by a pimp. Mike gets a beating.
Lydie invites them to a volleyball game on the beach; they turn up but don't participate. Later they go to a cinema where Christophe encounters Christelle, who works there. Stéphane and Youssef meet Lydie and one of her friends and have a brief and antagonistic exchange. Later, however, when Lydie and Youssef meet in the corridor, they almost kiss. Stéphane and Youssef cook for all of them and the boys play scrabble with Lydie. The others leave; Youssef and Lydie are on the point of making love when he notices she's wearing a Star of David. He recoils and when she accuses him of being racist he storms off.
That evening the four boys argue and Stéphane leaves the apartment, believing that women have come between them. The next day Youssef rushes to the airport in an attempt to see Lydie before her plane takes off. After an uncomfortable encounter with a bigoted ticket inspector Youssef finds her. They are reconciled and promise to meet up in Paris. The boys leave Biarritz together.
Review
We tend, in the UK, to associate 'young French cinema' with the seemingly endless flow of films about thirtysomething Parisians negotiating retarded transitions to adulthood. But in Homeboys at the Beach it's an altogether different sort of youth that's on show. The debut feature of 21-year-old writer/director Djamel Bensalah, the film has been a major success, selling over 1 million tickets and further enhancing the profile of its young star Djamel Debouze, who plays the fast-talking "Ayrab homeboy" Youssef. The French entertainment weekly Télérama has dubbed Debouze "a hip-hop variant of Louis de Funès" and the youthful beur comic has become a media star through regular appearances on cable channel Canal +. This is his second big-screen outing following a role in Laurent Bouhnik's prison drama Zonzon (1998).
It's a successful piece of casting in what is basically an unpretentious teen comedy lightly flavoured with social conscience. In the past decade there has been no shortage of films that have dealt with the French banlieues - most famously Kassovitz's La Haine (1994) - and the attendant issues of race, class and social exclusion. Playing up to his young star's comedic strengths, Bensalah has fashioned a basic fish-out-of-water set-up in which Youssef and his pals win a three-week holiday in luxurious Biarritz after having faked a "hard-hitting" video report on drug abuse. But one can't help feeling that the pleasant coastal location and luxury apartment in which the gang are installed have been chosen partly to avoid the problems of realism - social and formal - that come with a more rooted sense of place.
Alternating between bored afternoons on the beach and vegging out in front of the television, the boys devote their energy to trying to pick up girls. Their casual, rap-inflected misogyny provides the richest source of humour, but when it comes to deriving pathos from their sexual/emotional misadventures Bensalah has less success. Youssef's tentative but sincere feelings for Lydie, the attractive Parisian bourgeoise who's holidaying with friends in the next-door apartment, get complicated when he discovers she's Jewish. Her anger at what she perceives as Arab racism is momentary and is developed only in terms of a plot complication. In other words, we know they'll be reconciled - after all, Youssef is far too sympathetic a character not win out in the end.
Watching Homeboys at the Beach in the UK reminded me of the experience of seeing Kevin Smith's Clerks in a Paris cinema. The film's supercharged comic profanity was clearly a nightmare to subtitle, for its sheer quantity as much as its quality. This film presents similar problems. Precisely because it's mostly static, the film depends for its laughs largely on the characters' vernacular jousting and Debouze's comic talent as a quick-witted virtuoso of verlan (backslang). Although the cultural references derive from an international subcultural language that has grown out of hip-hop the implicit understanding is that this will override vernacular specificities. Maybe so, but Homeboys at the Beach needs a little more linguistic latitude in its translation to British screens. Without it, it comes across as intermittently engaging, lightly comic and not foul-mouthed enough.
Credits
- Producers
- Didier Creste
- Yann Gilbert
- Joël Leyendecker
- Nicolas Vannier
- Screenplay/Dialogue
- Djamel Bensalah
- Collaboration/Adaptation
- Gilles Laurent
- Director of Photography
- Martin Legrand
- Editor
- Fabrice Rouaud
- Art Director
- Gérard Marcireau
- ©Extravaganza/Orly Films/Sédif/France 2 Cinéma
- Production Companies
- Extravaganza & Orly Films present a co-production of Extravaganza/Orly Films/Sédif/France 2 Cinéma/sofica Sofinergie 4/sofica Gimages with the participation of Canal+/Centre National de la Cinématographie
- Executive Producer
- Yann Gilbert
- Associate Producer
- Nicolas Vannier
- Co-associate Producer
- Pierre-Francois Racine
- Production Manager
- Patrice Arrat
- Unit Managers
- Gilles Martinerie
- Pierre Soubestre
- Eric Duchène
- Sébastien Quérité
- Claire Châtelet
- Mohamed Debbouze
- Brice Firer
- Frédéric Vin
- Post-production Supervisor
- Christian Forget
- Assistant Directors
- Frédéric Berthe
- Emmanuel Bonhomme
- Script Supervisor
- Céline Breuil
- Casting
- Schula Siegfried
- Steadicam Operators
- Eric Leroux
- Jean-Baptiste Thibault
- Domino Operator
- Pascal Laurent
- Special Visual Effects
- Mikros Image
- Set Decorators
- Thomas Viscogliose
- Olivier Rabut
- Mélick Marcireau
- Yann Purcell
- Costume Designer
- Thierry Delettre
- Make-up
- Dany Beugin
- Title Design
- Daniel Ablin
- Music Supervisor
- Jean Luc Fauvel
- Music Consultant
- Valérie Albert
- Soundtrack
- "Biarritz" lyrics by Francis Lopez, Pierre Aspetzguy, music by Francis Lopez, performed by Luis Mariano; "Je danse le mia" includes sample from "Give Me the Night"; "Respect Is Burning" by Lionel Catalan;
- "La Danse des Mirlitons" & "Prélude" from "Casse noisette" by Pyotr Tchaikovsky; "L'h'mame" by Mohammed El Anka, performed by Rachid Taha; "Agua de beber" by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius De Moraes, arranged by Stéphane Planchon; "Feintes de corps et passements de jambes" by Alexis Ouzani, Bruno Beausir, aka Doc Gyneco; "Aquas de Marco" by Carlos Jobim; "Vanessa" by Alexis Ouzani, Bruno Beausir, aka Doc Gyneco, Passy Palende; "Empereur" from "Concerto pour piano No 5, Opus 73" by Ludwig van Beethoven; "Plain Sailing" by Lesley Hodge, Craig McLaren, performed by Coco and The Bean; "El camino Part 1" performed by Shazz; "Ach adani" by Abderrahmane Amrani, performed by Rachid Taha; "Comme dans un film" by Sawny - Raf, Desh, arranged by Romaric, performed by Enfaz; "Dimanche calin" by Eric Mallet, Dominique Guiot; "Techno Tribe" by Laurent Lombard; "Flashing Knives" by Steve Gray; "Scotland Yard", "Bahamas" by Marc Durst; "Western Spaghetti" by Eric Gemsa, Eric Caspar; "Prize Winner", "Prize Winners" by David Mindel; "Gunning for Danger" by Syd Dale; "UFO Story" by Eric Caspar; "Friends" by Simon Chamberlain; "Driving Force" by Stephane Joly, Eric Caspar; "Active Woman" by Stephane Joly, Christophe Boutin; "Animal Magic" by Laurence Johnson; "Jungle Trek" by Richard Harvey; "Building Momentum" by Dave Hewson; "Spring Fashion", "Sweet and Lovely" by Alan Braden; "All Day Long I Dream" by Henry Davies
- Sound Supervisor
- Jean Luc Fauvel
- Sound
- Jean-Bernard Thomasson
- Mixers
- Joël Rangon
- William Flageollet
- Alain Primot
- Sound Editor
- Elisabeth Paquotte
- Sound Effects
- Laurent Lévy
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Thierry Sabatier
- Foley
- Recordist:
- Joseph Catricala
- Cast
- Jamel Debbouze
- Youssef
- Julien Courbey
- Mike
- Lorant Deutsch
- Christophe
- Stéphane Soo Mongo
- Stéphane
- Olivia Bonamy
- Lydie
- Mariù Roversi
- Christelle
- Julia Vaidis Bogard
- Lea
- Jessica Beudaert
- Dora
- Sam Karmann
- bus conductor
- Ramsy Bedia
- the presenter
- Jean-Louis Livi
- the prefect
- Anne-Charlotte Guillot
- Béatrice Rosenblatt
- dance girls
- Charley Fouquet
- roller blade woman
- Éric Judor
- journalist
- Frédéric Amico
- young man in cinema
- Dany Beugin
- concierge
- Jean-Yves Gondelaud
- neighbour
- Fabien Langeraert
- Olivier Saint-Jours
- Romuald Jonqua
- surfers
- Certificate
- tbc
- Distributor
- Gala Film Distributors
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Subtitles