Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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.

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.

Maik Hoppe I'm sorry, that the previous critiques on this 2010 French/Belgian movie paint such a dark, horrific and - most of all - wrong picture of it's content and meaning.First off, let's get the plot right: Jonas, a young man around 17/18, lives alone with his brother near the Belgian border of France. His parents separated and his mother moved away and just visits them once ore twice a month. Jonas usually spends most of his time practicing to be a tennis-pro (just to get to a critique formally posted: you can not expect every young French actor to play tennis like a pro, bro) or with Didier, Nathalie and Pierre, friends of his mother, who play in the same tennis-club as Jonas does. As Jonas spends most of his time on the tennis-court, his academical achievements are not quite the top of the crops, actually he already is 3 years older than most of his classmates. Anyway, as most young man at his age, Jonas makes first contact witch sexuality (with a young girl from his school: Delphine) This stirs the interest of Didier, Nathalie and Pierre, who seem to have a very very good relationship with Jonas, as they talk (almost) openly about Jonas' experiences with Delphine.When Jonas isn't allowed to take the regular exams, Pierre offers, to prepare him for a special test to replace it. During this "private lessons" (which by the way is the German title of the movie) Pierre (Nathalie and Didier also) start to get very very VERY close to Jonas in the process of "teaching" him how everything works concerning sex.The movie does not (as previously claimed) deal with a "pedophile pervert" or "mid-thirties giving blow jobs to minors" but with the sometimes thin borders between being helpful, being close and being abused. Joachim Lafosse (the director) depicts in a very distant but still not cold way the subtle changes that lead to... well I don't wanna tell you to much ;-)After I watched the movie, I, personally, asked myself the question: When did this road towards "abuse" start? was it planned by Pierre from the beginning? Or was it Jonas' decision in the end?I think you should get your own answers and watch this astoundingly intense movie, perfectly fitting into the wave of Western-European new-age movies (for example the German movie "Everyone Else")Thanks for readingMaikP.s. : Excuse my weak English, it's actually 2.30am, but I just had to get some things right here ;-)