An Impudent Girl

An Impudent Girl (1985)

L'Effrontée

Charlotte Castang is a working-class 13-year-old girl, who lives in a drab, run-down neighbourhood, and is ready to become an adult. Her mother died giving birth to her, and she lives with her crass brother and a father whose attention is elsewhere. Her only friend is Lulu, a sick 10-year-old she regards as a pest. Charlotte is antisocial, bored and dreams of a better life. Her life improves when she meets Clara Bauman, a pianist prodigy.

Date of release
1985-12-11
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (129)
Runtime
1h 36m
Genres
Drama, Comedy
Director
Claude Miller

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 3 · Nominations: 8. Including: Louis Delluc Prize; César Award for Best Female Revelation; César Award for Best Supporting Actress

An Impudent Girl is a 1985 French film directed by Claude Miller. It stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won the César Award for Most Promising Actress, and Bernadette Lafont, who won the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. It is a loose adaptation of the novel Frankie Addams.

Production

The film was seen as a return by Claude Miller to the material of his first feature, The Best Way to Walk. Miller:

I'm fascinated by those violent passions that make you ready to cut your throat for something you believe in, passions that, for better or worse, lose their edge as you grow older. In An Impudent Girl though the conflict is much less violent than the humiliation and hurt of The Best Way to Walk. The main character comes out of it very well, in fact it's certainly my most optimistic film.

The film was a loose adaptation of the novel The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, although that is uncredited. Miller:

It isn't a direct adaptation. There were just enough elements from the book for us to apply for the rights. First of all the Americans who owned them took ages to reply. Then they wanted a huge sum of money, almost as much as the cost of the film.

Two weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, the rights had not been secured. Miller decided to go ahead and make the movie anyway. "Now we're negotiating to pay a reasonable percentage," he said in 1986. "Fortunately the film has been a hit."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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