Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai, the directors of Rookies, which opens Berlinale’s Generation K section, have been interested in the human body before. They followed the choreographer Benjamin Millepied in Reset. Pornographic actor Rocco Siffredi, who you could say is a dancer and choreographer of a different sort, was the subject of Rocco. And after a detour into the Sanctuary of Lourdes, they are back to dance to choreography, to the human body moving in rhythm, in Rookies (Allons enfants).
Whereas the subjects of the earlier films were adults (and an adult star), this time Teurlai, who is in charge of cinematographic duties, has his camera trained on a group of kids. The group has been accepted into Turgot, a high school in Paris that has produced one recent president (Sarkozy) and ranks among the Top 50. But the cohort we follow through this nearly two-hour documentary hasn’t been accepted because of their great grades, but mainly because of their talent for dance. Hip hop dance. Paris is still a moveable feast, as Hemingway averred, but here’s a variation on what constitutes moving.
The differences within the dancing cohort are conspicuous and even the kids comment on them. One notes the different colours of their skin, another thinks there are even differences in things as supposedly imperceptible as “stance”. We follow a handful of the 50 kids selected for the programme, from admission to eventual graduation. As one might expect from a group of people at a real-life school where the principal, by way of a welcome address, admonishes them there will be no compromising on academics, the fates of the kids will not be uniform. To their credit, the directors don’t really amp up the theatrics on decision day.
Before the documentary gets there, though, we get a look at the kids’ backgrounds. Well, maybe not a look, since Rookies takes place almost entirely on the school grounds. The kids talk about their lives outside of school, which helps us understand their motivation and, in some cases, their lapses. “I have heavy baggage, full of big stones,” says one.
The kids are of their time, just as you would expect lovers of hip hop to be. They have their phones, they talk about different types of relationships, they love rap. After one kid encounters Baudelaire, he says, “They had strong writers in those days. Even compared to today’s rappers, they are strong.” Viewed from a modern perspective, perhaps it is Baudelaire who should be flattered. Hip hop has comprehensively proven to be the anthem of youth wherever they are found in the world. And whatever else is discussed, Demaizière and Teurlai are interested mostly in hip hop dance, in the way these young people offer their bodies over to the gods of sound. But the imperatives of narrative ensure that there is some kind of story and not just a montage of dance, which the filmmakers are smart to include.
The directors show some of the faculty without going into their lives. Nonetheless there are glimpses of their humanity and, in one case, their own less than stellar qualities. In an assessment, a teacher calls a student named Michelle by the name Charlotte. Michelle smiles and says what has just happened is part of why she feels as if she has been side-lined in class. “I get offended that you confuse me with others.”
There can be no comeback to that, but the teacher offers one: “It’s the ‘ch’ sound”. She confuses similar sounding names — it’s not because both Charlotte and Michelle are Black, she says. Charlotte accepts this explanation on camera but one wonders about the lasting effect of such an error, common in the real world, in a programme created to help kids level up their educations.
The directors’ love for voiceovers makes it a tad difficult to get who is speaking sometimes. And there are occasional longueurs in this well-meaning documentary which, at 115 minutes, is much too long. Perhaps it’s an understandable flaw considering the number of kids involved and the length of time invested by the filmmakers. Luckily, the kids are quite a sight dancing and, at least in one sequence, they show they are more than their bodies. It happens when the students are asked a question offscreen. By way of response, they proffer commentary on the connection between wealth and a life like their parents’. One kid eloquently explains their fascination with money. “You can’t be flashing crazy mansions and videos, guys rolling in cash, then expect us to say, ‘Money, nah.’ We’ve been shown. We’ll take it.”
That’s a thought so well-expressed, the kid should probably become a public intellectual. That will never happen, though. The pay isn’t good.
Directors: Thierry Demaizière, Alban Teurlai
Producers: Stéphanie Schorter, Romain Icard, Thierry Demaizière, Alban Teurlai
Executive Producer: Stéphanie Schorter, Macha Prod
Screenplay: Elsa Le Peutrec, Thierry Demaizière, Alban Teurlai
Cinematography: Alban Teurlai
Editing: Alban Teurlai
Music: Pierre Aviat
Sound: Emmanuel Guionet
Production Manager: Armelle Baubau
Production Companies: Falabracks (France), Tohubohu (US)
World Sales: Le Pacte
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Generation K)
In French
115 minutes
