France 1960:Charles De Gaulle had been ruling the country for two years (see the sequence in the cinema);the "Nouveau Franc " had just happened(but they 'd still got the good old "Cent Sous " coins which the brats put on the tracks before the train comes ;Brigitte Bardot continued to fascinate the crowds (extract from "Et Dieu Créa La Femme":it was however a NC-18 film But the youngsters managed);and " Les 400 Coups" is next week's movie.
There's a darker side to 1960:the Algeria war was not yet over (it would take two more years) and a newspaper reads " eight soldiers were killed in an ambush "1960,it's mostly that.
"Les Aiguilles Rouges" is some kind of updated "war of the buttons ";eight teenagers go for a hike .Against all odds,in those magnificent mountain landscapes ,it's not your idea of fun:they do not get on very well,some of them have already experimented tragedy (death of a father,a brother drafted in a dirty war...)Like in "La Guerre Des Boutons,and although the screenplays are completely different,these teenagers don't seem to trust the grown ups anymore :the best scene is the young boy reading a letter from his conscript brother and crying "if I told you what they forced him to do!".And it seems that this misunderstanding extends to the teenagers ' relationships.
The adults return in the last fifteen minutes ,cameos for Bernadette Laffont (nurse) ,Rufus (gendarme) ,Patrick Bouchitey and Richard Berry (fathers).
It was not a big success in France ;I would not be surprised if it became a sleeper.
