Being 17 (2016)

The photography was simply sublime. Cuts between scenes and angles were seemless and organic. The character development was lovingly drawn out in exquisite detail - Thomas' love of the mountains and his defensive loneliness because of a broken home, Damien's scholastic ambition and his growing feelings for Thomas. You could feel the tension and attraction developing naturally between the two. The acting was top notch from everyone especially the grief of the mother at tragic death of her husband. The progression of the boys feelings for each other was perfectly believable, I never caught them acting. It deserved many more awards. Truly a work of art, in direct contrast to the pretentious, contrived, over hyped Call Me By Your Name and the wooden, Shatner-like acting of Armie Hammer.

Every single character felt so real and genuine.The acting was fantastic!The summary I felt was very basic but when watching the film, it's a way different experience. They did an amazing job of showing us the scenery without boring us to death and they were slowly falling in love.I loved how nothing felt rushed,the ending was beautiful and very touching. I'm so glad this film ended in a realistic but happy end for the gay characters. I'm so used to seeing sad gay films, it's so nice to see something so different. The parents figures played amazing well fleshed out characters, I truly felt for their struggles. So glad they didn't do the typical homophobic route but instead a more unique perspective. Overall,this has now become one of my favorite films.

Nice story telling. The striking thing about this movie for me was the superb acting by Sandrine Kiberlain, who plays the doctor-mom, Marianne. The story is well written, and I can see why some of the reviewers seem to find fault with it, eg., "why did she invite her son's bully to stay with them ?"...but the way the story flows, it does not seem unbelievable. Some of the human elements are fantastic: when Thomas finds out his step-mother is pregnant, he tells Marianne that at last she will have a real child - to which she replies 'there are no fake children'. The delivery of dialogue here is fantastic. Same, when she finds out, finally, why the 2 boys have been fighting - her dialogue delivery and demeanor are superlative. The military funeral is done well too. The scenery has been used to good effect. The scenes of snow falling, driving in the snow, and of the isolated lakes where the boys go swimming in the nude in the middle of winter all add to the sense of isolation that Thomas has been used to living in.

This movie is the best-directed contemporary gay love story I've ever seen. It doesn't over- dramatize the stigma that all gay youth deal with when coming out to themselves and others, but it doesn't pretend such stigma isn't important. It presents attraction and love and friendship and family and desire as the complexly interwoven mess that it always is, but is so rarely seen in media. It shows love as not the solution to all your problems, but also that it doesn't have to be tragic. It portrays traditional families charitably, alongside gayness - they don't have to be natural enemies, but they have different dynamics which are usually either ignored or treated one-dimensionally. Most importantly, this film describes coming out as it really is: a profoundly individual act, and usually played out non- tendentiously and in a narrative completely unique to that individual. Most coming out films I've seen swerve into clichés and predictable outcomes. Although this film's plot resolution is fairly conventional, somehow the characters' authenticity, uniqueness and vulnerability fulfilled the story in a deeply touching, yet unsentimental way. Bravo.If you're not gay, you might think this movie is nothing special, the way some straight people I know thought Brokeback Mountain was tripe, not paying any attention to the repression central to that story. The moving qualities in this film are mostly a coming-out thing, so perhaps straight people won't relate, but there are glimmers here (and in our times) of that narrative holding enough substance to speak to universal truths.