Coming of Age

The title of this blog is what strings all of the films I watched together. The common thread in The Twilight Girls, Murmur of the Heart, and A Nos Amours is the coming of age experiences each main character goes through. The films were each made in crucial decades for fashion, France, and film.

The Twilight Girls, or Les Collégiennes, was made in 1957, in a time when America was censoring almost everything that was broadcasted publicly. It's a look into the lives of girls attending boarding school. The original French version of the film had a few nude scenes, which both shocked viewers and made the movie very historically significant. In terms of fashion, we all know that the '50s were a time for women to dress femininely and smartly, with a clean cut dress and accentuated waist lines. We'll get back to how this affected The Twilight Girls.

Murmur of the Heart, or Le souffle au cœur, is a film of a young boy growing up quickly. It was made in 1971, when a disco scene and elaborate lives were popular. The movie explores living richly as both a young adolescent and as an adult. The clothing of the '70s was sexy for women, with both mini and maxi skirts, and preppy for men. You'll see more of this in the film when we discuss it further.

The last coming of age film I watched was A Nos Amours, a story of a promiscuous young girl living in Paris in the 1980s. As we went over in class, the '80s was a time when French films were very excessive, loud, bright, and risky, similar to the children growing up in this time. The fashions the characters wore in the movie were very important to the overall characterization, as you will soon get a deeper look into.

Just as the clothing we wear defines us, especially at a vulnerable time in our lives like our teenage years, the fashions worn in all three films truly made an impact on the characters. All three of the main characters in these films experienced sexual awakenings, a dose of reality, and situations that shocked them into maturity. In my next few posts, I will dissect scenes of the movies and how the wardrobe played a role in the lives of the films' characters.