US Go Home

Claire Denis 
Paris 1994
from the television series Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge
with Alice Houri, Jessica Tharaud, Grégoire Colin & Vincent Gallo

Written in collaboration with Anne Wiazemsky (lead model in Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar and JL Godard’s second wife) and shot by her usual camerawoman, Agnès Godard, US Go Home marks an interesting turning point in Denis’ still early career as a director, to which she came relatively late in life.  It was her first casting of Grégoire Colin, whom she would employ in the majority of her subsequent tales in both larger and smaller roles.  Her story telling in this hour long movie becomes far less straight forward, more elliptical.  So much is left unexplained.  The tendency was already present in her work, but here the elusiveness feels unavoidable.  It centers around an adolescent girl who plans to lose her virginity at a party of older, wealthier, teenagers, accompanied by her friend and following her brother, without welcome.  Things never go as planned.