Direction: Lise Akoka, Romane Guéret
Country: France
Embracing a docu-fiction style that works for most of its time, The Worst Ones - the first feature from directors Lise Akoka and Romane Guéret - is designed to trigger emotional responses with disarmingly honest portrayals. It’s a sympathetic, interestingly structured mise en abyme carried by young non-professional actors. The film, which took more than three years to come to life, is an extension of their 2016 short film Chasse Royale.
The directors focus is the backstage of a painstaking casting process (they actually assessed hundreds of youngsters’ acting improvisations) and subsequent filming in the underprivileged Picasso neighborhood located in the Northern French city of Boulogne-Sur-Mer. Four teenagers - considered the worst ones by the local people - are chosen by a questionable Belgian film director, Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh). They are Jessy (Loïc Pech), who had problems with the law; Ryan (Timéo Mahaut), who lives with his sister and never cries; the moody Maylis (Mélina Vanderplancke), who is not sure if she wants to participate in the film; and Lily (Mallory Wanecque), who earned a bad reputation at school after losing her little brother to cancer. Despite the interesting characters, I found the director to be the most intriguing of them all.
The film’s main victories come from its magnificent ability to move the focus from children to children captured in their own environment, and its unwillingness to fall back on convenient labels and the usual soap operatics. Yet, there are a few awkward moments that stem from the fabricated shooting scenes. Wanecque and Mahaut win us with their performances, and the worst become the best as their candor emerges in front of an observant camera that is avid at capturing their reactions, whether spontaneous or imposed.
