Grande École

There's a touch of Rohmer in "Grande Ecole". Characters, set in unglamorous, surburban spaces, are just a little too intent and penetrating to be real. Their emotions are simple, yet surprisingly delicate. They experience no jealousy or revenge, but desire, self-doubt and tenderness. Like Rohmer's, Salis' movies feel too nostalgic and sweet to be topical, and that aestheticism is put to the use of tolerance and humanism. Sex scenes for example are remarkable. Homo- and heterosexual love become comparable because Salis makes caressing and enticing the cornerstone of every sexual encounter. The movie however becomes overtly theatrical towards the end, and does not tune in with the closure that Rohmer would have gone for. Salis resolves conflicts, by now difficult to disentangle, only by confusing the viewer to a point of no return and settling for the beauty of seeing all characters reunited finally, if not in the movie, at least on the screen: him and her, and him and her, and him.