jm10701 Although I can't say I liked this movie, I'm giving it a fairly high rating (six stars) because what it does it does very effectively. I had to keep reminding myself that the creeps in this movie are not real people, which means the ones who made it did a good job.Unlike some other reviewers, the sexual element didn't affect me much either way. I neither approve nor disapprove of unrelated adults coaching an effectively orphaned teenage boy in the arts and sciences of sex, any form of sex he's interested in experiencing. If he's old enough to do it, and if he's interested, then it's okay. If God hadn't wanted adolescents to be sexually active he could easily have designed them to mature sexually at a later age, but he didn't.But what does bother me a great deal in this movie is the extraordinarily selfish way the adults treat the adolescents. They are cruel, shallow, snide, petty and totally self-absorbed creeps, and they push their creepiness aggressively onto the emotionally vulnerable adolescents. That emotional abuse is what I find repellent. The fact that Jonas and Delphine are children (and they ARE children emotionally, even though they are not children physically) is almost incidental.Pierre, Nathalie and Didier are bullies, and if their victims had been people of any age, even people their own age who were less aggressively arrogant than they are - and even if the focus had been on something besides sex: on money or looks or physical fitness or social class or something else - their behavior would have been just as despicable as it was in this movie. They are bullies, and bullies are always despicable.But the creepiness is so pervasive and so effectively portrayed that the director and writers MUST have done it intentionally. We must be SUPPOSED to despise these people, and we do. So this movie is in the odd class of well made movies that are intentionally unpleasant to watch because they're about despicable characters. Dennis Hopper was in many movies like that.

adamsoch-1 Let's get something straight: the English translation of the title "Eleve Libre" is very, very wrong. It will confuse the viewer and it does not do justice to this sensitive, well-made, subtle work of art. "Free Student" is a 'mot à mot' translation but, if I invoke the creative goddess, I would be inspired and call the film: "Student with a Choice". The alternatives were always available to this 17 year old "not so keen to study" a talented tennis player who besides school, tennis, friends and family, also has to deal with sex, because nature was calling him to do so. But sex is something our society is NOT taking very seriously, besides saying: Just don't do it, or it is something shameful, dirty and embarrassing. Well, society got these erroneous notions from the old, and misguided religious texts, and most people are stuck with them even today. Sex is life, sex is normal, sex is beautiful and important in this unorthodox, well written, directed and edited film. The film is perfectly paced, it has a pleasant rhythm like a sexual act or better yet, like Ravel's Bolero; it starts slowly and it calmly arrives to a climax just in time for you to have lots of honest and uncommon questions. This film is also utterly sincere, open and nonjudgmental; it makes us uncomfortable, because the approach to life in general is different to what we are accustomed to. If you are not willing to let the wind of the "atypical" caress you, then this film is not for you, but if you are willing to see a group of people struggling with life in a very different way that will create discussion after the credits are rolling, get this gripping and attention-grabbing film. Jonas is an adorable, charming and open-minded talented teenager who is privately tutored not only in math, chemistry and geography but also the art of freethinking, going steady with his girlfriend and the art of sex. In a very crucial moment, his mother comes to visit and asks Jonas if all is well and if there is anything she can do for him, but he assures her that everything is fine and that he likes his private lessons.There are many layers and metaphors in this linear and simple story with extremely complex issues or unspoken topics, such as the sexual awakening of teenagers today. Jonas is quite sure about his sexuality and his attraction to the opposite sex, but open to experimentation with his adult friends when the time is right. In life, how do we know if anything is good or bad, wet or dry, sweet or bitter if one does not try them? Jonas does it and gets his assurance that he is very heterosexual. This crucial scene is handled elegantly by the sensitive, talented director Joachim Lafosse, and well acted by the young protagonist. Some viewers slandered the film, it is understandable, because the subject matter is taboo, and frankly, there is no other film like it. For those who think this work of art is perverted or abusive, I suggest to watch the end of the movie carefully, because the answer to this positive, rare and moving story it's there in the last 2-minutes, in the last 2 cuts of the film.

johannes2000-1 Okay, this movie may not be everyone's cup of tea. Whichever way you look at it, the main theme is undeniably a one-sided sexual relationship between an overbearing adult and a naive and gullible adolescent boy. Jonas being "already" sixteen years of age may make sexual intercourse with him legally permitted, but the fact remains that there's a huge unbalance between the two of them: the adult party acting as a self-appointed teacher and as the last hope of Jonas' ambition to succeed for his final exams, while young Jonas is (or at least feels to be) totally dependent of Pierre. If Pierre had been his actual professor at school, he would without any doubt have risked expulsion because of sexual harassment. So Pierre could have known (and was intelligent enough to actually know) that he was wrong. It's only in the very end of the movie that the balance weighs a little bit back in favor of Jonas, who - with the sleek opportunism of his age- , sees that his knowledge of Pierre now gives him control over him and makes him get what he wants: a degree.This doesn't sound as a fun movie, and it isn't. It's appalling to witness the machinations of Pierre and his two equally adult friends, who very gradually but deliberately succeed in sexual corrupting Jonas. They make his first sexual experience with his (equally inexperienced) girlfriend into the favorite topic at the dinner table ("does she has a vaginal or a clitoral orgasm?"), with total disregard to Jonas' uneasiness on the subject, and at some point start to "teach" him the real stuff: making him witness them having sexual intercourse and giving him blow-jobs, in the process teaching him so many adult tricks that his girlfriend can't cope with it and shies away. It's all the more appalling because Jonas is a vulnerable child, with his parents divorced, he and his brother living with his mother but she's all the time away on some vague missions and the boys are totally on their own. Jonas does bad at school, his tennis doesn't work-out either and he feels like a total looser. And now he also feels like he's a looser with sex, because these adults make fun of him and his girlfriend backs off. As said before, it's only at the end of the movie that Jonas discovers that he can stand up for himself. If the choice he makes is morally a good one is questionable, apparently the director wants us to judge for ourselves.The acting in this movie is mostly strong, although these adults all three of them have a pompous way of delivering their lines, but maybe that's just to emphasize their deliberate and self-righteous character. But I was especially impressed with young Bloquet as Jonas, he seems like a natural and is totally convincing as the naive, slightly dumb but eager to learn, impressionable adolescent who outwardly shrugs away his problems rather than face or discuss them, but all the while subtly showing the inner turmoils and doubts he harbors. The actor cannot have been much older than the character he plays here, so it makes you wonder how he coped with all this.The direction calmly lets unfold the story by itself, there are no artistic mannerisms to distract the viewer; on the contrary, the direction is almost clinical and with that chillingly effective. The script is great. I loved the fact that we seem to step on board of a riding train and never get anything explained, so things only very gradually begin to dawn on you or just stay in the dark. What's Jonas' mother going away for? What is the role of his silent (older?) brother? How did he encounter Pierre and his friends and why does his mother trusts them so much to allow her son to spend so much time with them? It's like the script cut-off all the fringes to make the bleak story all the more visible. It's the same with the ending: we see Jonas finally getting his degree. But how things with Pierre will go from there on we don't learn. We will have to guess.To sum it up: it's an impressive and bold movie with a repulsive story and a questionable morale, that lingers in your head for a long time and can cause some serious discussion on the topics of sexual exploitation and opportunism. Movies like this, that shake you up rather than entertain you are not a bad thing at all.

ynoel-2 It is said (and I have noted to be true) that people see in other people, in works of Art etc. or anything subjective, what THEY actually are. They project their own being, or shortcomings or fears or hidden secrets. That the author of the review below attack this sensitive film is such a disproportionately virulent (and plainly erroneous) way has said much more about him as a person than he probably intended to express. And to call a 17 year-old a 'child' (and who is in his full legal right to consent to any relationship he wishes to pursue, protected by the law itself) is so absurd as to suggest the author had a North American education. To see rape, to see perverted seduction in what is most obviously all but that, would be an alarm calm for anyone reading his review on this subtle film. What is sure is that with such a serious imbalance within him to feel the need to explode in this way, I would make sure no one below 18 walk near him. We have many recent examples of those who shouted far above the rest, and ended up being caught with their pants down, and I don't mean figuratively. His review reads like an open book of serious personal issues, as yet unresolved, and if his review serves any purpose it would be to help him seek assistance. More to do with the film now; it is of course slow and bleak like many European films, but like many European films dare to recount real life, real subtleties, real complexities of relationships that much cinema avoids - and that many like the author mentioned above would like to push so deep into (their subconscious) perversion as to ...create a perversion in itself, quite aside from the what the filmmaker made. It somehow makes them feel they have crushed their demon for a while - little to do with a review.