The New Kid

Benoît starts at a new middle school in Paris. The popular group shuts him out at once and he ends up with the three or four odd children who are left over. He likes Johanna, who is Swedish, but she drifts towards the popular side. On his uncle's advice he throws a big party and invites the whole class. Three people come. Rudi Rosenberg writes and directs in his first feature. Réphaël Ghrenassia plays Benoît. The best thing in it is how natural the children are. The dialogue does not try to fix the awkwardness; embarrassment, silence and badly chosen sentences are left where they fall. The large transformation the school film template promises is not here. Benoît does not become popular and does not defeat anybody; he simply finds his own group, and the film says that is enough. The uncle is the comic source: an adult whose help is useless and whose every piece of advice is wrong. It runs a little over eighty minutes and takes no unnecessary detours. It won the audience award for best film at the 2015 Zagreb film festival. Who it is for: viewers who like French teen comedy and warm films about exclusion. Who it is not for: the story is familiar, the scale is small, and for anyone waiting for a large event nothing happens.