Seize Printemps

Spring Blossom offers a refreshing, imaginative take on teenage ennui. French writer/director Suzanne Lindon dramatizes the familiar ennui of adolescence in a refreshing, imaginative feature film debut. Moreover, she expertly plays the central sixteen-year-old misfit, also named Suzanne, who becomes enamored of thirty-five-year-old stage actor Raphaël, immersed in his own boredom with repetitive rehearsals and performances, notably as an oak tree.

There’s something inherently uncomfortable about age-gap romances when one person is underaged. Even when the older party isn’t a teacher, coach, or other authority figure, it’s still problematic. What’s remarkable about the French film Spring Blossom is that unlike similar films made by men, this one is from the perspective of the young woman and doesn’t shy away from showing precisely how intelligent but also naive and young the protagonist really is… probably because writer-director-star Suzanne Lindon penned the script when she was 15 (and shot the film when she was 19).

Multi-hyphenate Suzanne Lindon has Cesar-winning actors Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain as parents, and knew from a young age she wanted to find her way into performing in film world on her own terms, and by her own merits. She started writing Spring Blossom, (originally titled Seize Printemps, which means 16 Spring in French) at the age of 15, as a way to create a strong lead character for herself as actor. In 2019, she decided to direct the work as well.