17 Girls

Inspired by a real-life incident in America, French filmmaker siblings Delphine and Muriel Coulin's debut stars Louise Grinberg as Camille, a popular girl who starts a trend in her coastal community of Lorient after becoming pregnant during a one-night stand. Although Camille is hardly happy with the news, her friends offer their support when she decides to have the baby. Camille even tells her single mother that she thinks she can do a better job, although Camille continues to smoke and drink. When the unpopular Florence (Roxane Duran) also turns up pregnant, she becomes part of the group, and Camille encourages the other girls to follow suit so that they'll always be together. While not stupid, the girls are certainly naive, since most of them agree, never taking money into account (one teen even pays a boy to sleep with her). The girls want to continue their studies, while taking turns babysitting, but there's no mention of work. Camille's brother, an Afghanistan veteran, stands by her, but the rest of Lorient's parents and school administrators are less enthusiastic. And even though the same boy impregnates two girls, men play no real part in the plan. As the girls head towards term, however, reality begins to set in. The use of first-person plural voiceover here recalls Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, which also examined the consequences of teen group-think. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)