Reinventing Marvin [Marvin ou la belle education] *** (2017, Finnegan Oldfield, Jules Porier, Grégory Gadebois, Vincent Macaigne, Catherine Salée, Catherine Mouchet, Charles Berling, Isabelle Huppert) – Classic Movie Review 12,731

Anne Fontaine’s 2017 French drama film Reinventing Marvin [Marvin ou la belle education] stars the then rising French star Finnegan Oldfield as Marvin, a gay actor in Paris struggling to write and perform a theatre show about his bullied childhood.

Director Anne Fontaine’s 2017 French drama film Reinventing Marvin [Marvin ou la belle education] stars the then rising French star Finnegan Oldfield as Marvin, a gay actor in Paris struggling to write and perform a theatre show about his bullied childhood.

Marvin Bijoux (Jules Porier), a boy in a working-class family in a small French village, suffers constant bullying at school from his crappy, violently homophobic schoolmates, and at home from his reactionary alcoholic father (Grégory Gadebois), for being too sensitive, too girly, too different, too gay. It doesn’t help that his name is Bijoux (Jewels).

But a kindly new head teacher (Catherine Mouchet) and then a chance encounter with a drama teacher offers him the chance to leave the village, study in Epinal, and go to Paris to escape his situation and his damaged sense of self. The film simultaneously follows Marvin (Finnegan Oldfield) in his mid-twenties as a theatre student in Paris.

Reinventing Marvin skilfully balances its complex subject matter with strong social relevance, and is thoroughly impressive, haunting and impactful, though it perhaps slightly drifts away towards the end, just when it needs its biggest impact. Nevertheless it succeeds as the intended multi-layered drama about one man’s road to identity building, reinvention, transformation and self-determination. He becomes his own man, with a new name and new teeth!

It is painstakingly, lovingly made by Anne Fontaine, saying all the right things and sounding all the right notes, and doing it gracefully. With so many odds stacked against him the boy shouldn’t have survived his upbringing at all. But he does! And that’s beautifully celebrated here. He’s got father issues, and they are firmly, rather movingly dealt with at the film’s conclusion. Marvin gets to understand the dad, forgive him, and even like him.

Finnegan Oldfield impresses greatly as the troubled, tormented Marvin. Martin, and Jules Porier impresses even more as the bullied young version of Marvin. Isabelle Huppert notably appears playing herself, a kindly supporter and then colleague of the young writer/ actor after meeting him at a party. Her support for the film is very helpful. Grégory Gadebois as Dany Bijoux and Catherine Salée as Odile Bijoux fit the bill exactly. Charles Berling is suitably waspish and predatory as the rich protector. lover Roland, an iffy father figure if ever we saw one.

Marvin ou la belle éducation screened in the Horizons section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2017, and won the Queer Lion.

It is written by Anne Fontaine and Pierre Trividic, produced by Philippe Carcassonne, Jean-Louis Livi and Pierre-Alexandre Schwab, and shot by Yves Angelo.

Anne Fontaine’s previous film is the esteemed The Innocents (2016).

The cast are Finnegan Oldfield as Marvin Bijoux, Jules Porier as Young Marvin, Grégory Gadebois as Dany Bijoux, Vincent Macaigne as Abel Pinto, Catherine Salée as Odile Bijoux, Catherine Mouchet as Madeleine Clément, Charles Berling as Roland, Isabelle Huppert as Herself, and India Hair as Vanessa.

Finnegan Oldfield was born in 1991 in Lewes, UK, to a French mother and an English father. He is also known for Les Cowboys and Nocturama.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,731

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