Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Naïma has just turned 16. This summer, she will have to decide what she wants from life if she doesn’t want to miss out. Then her cousin Sofia arrives, with an amazing body and a dangerously seductive lifestyle. Naïma desires only to follow her own path, so long as it leads upwards… Despite the warnings of her best friend Dodo, she and Sofia will live through unforgettable encounters during a long summer that will mark them forever.
Rebecca Zlotowski's French Riviera coming-of-age film is visually lustrous, capturing the sun-drenched Cannes backdrop with a genuinely sensuous eye — the cinematography is its clearest strength, evoking a languid, pleasure-soaked atmosphere reminiscent of classic European summer films. The performances are naturalistic, particularly Mina Farid as Naïma and Zahia Dehar in her debut as Sofia, though neither role demands exceptional range. The plot is deliberately slight — a slice-of-life sketch more than a structured narrative — which suits its impressionistic ambitions but leaves dramatic momentum thin. Novelty sits in the middle: the film occupies familiar coming-of-age and female sexuality territory without reinventing it, though Zlotowski's gaze is genuinely thoughtful rather than exploitative. The ending feels underdeveloped and somewhat abrupt, declining to resolve or meaningfully complicate the threads it raises, leaving the film feeling more like a prologue than a complete statement.