in ,

The Worst Ones Is a Brilliant Metatextual Flex

Timéo Mahaut in The Worst Ones. Photo: courtesy Kino Lorber.

Releasing in U.S. theaters this week after winning the Grand Prix–Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, The Worst Ones is a brilliant, beautiful, wildly metatextual flex of a film, one so gripping, touching, and tantalizing it can hardly be described. But I’ll try, and I hope my doing so gives you compelling reasons to watch. I doubt you’ll have seen anything quite like it as its layers unfold and its brilliant young cast works an ineffable onscreen magic.

Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret are the film’s first-time feature directors. The two met about a decade ago, Akoka an actor turned casting director and acting coach, Gueret an assistant director, casting assistant, and camera operator: during preproduction for a feature film, they together auditioned more than 4,000 young non-professional actors over a period of several months. It was an experience that would inform The Worst Ones, and between then and now they have been co-directing short films, documentaries, and web series.

Shot and set in Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, The Worst Ones concerns itself with the production of a feature film. Flemish director Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh) is planning a coming-of-age story focused on four young children from the suburb’s working class. In the tradition of banlieue cinema, his neorealist impulse has him auditioning and casting nonprofessional actors for each of the roles in order to achieve an immediacy that will capture the rough-and-tumble lives of the youth as they experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, and violence. It’s a long-planned, expressly personal film to be called Pissing in the North Wind.

Turns out, pissing in the North wind might be just what Gabriel is doing. Perhaps he never heard the old industry adage “Never work with children or animals.” (Often attributed to W. C. Fields, there’s no verifiable source for the dictum.) Nevertheless, Gabriel dives right into working with both. The children he casts from the local Cité Picasso housing project are all working-class themselves. It’s a gambit that has its difficulties, not the least of which is the resistance and resentment from the locals who feel the chosen cast are all “the worst ones,” the kids with reputations who were picked unfairly over their own and who will reap rewards that are undeserved. God forbid these poor kids get a break of any sort.

The children themselves are, frankly, a handful. Attention-challenged, pre-pubescent Ryan (Timéo Mahaut) can’t concentrate, can’t remember his lines, and can’t keep a straight face during the dramatic scenes. Gabriel seems to take something of a paternal shine to the little soulful-eyed, closely-shorn boy. To elicit a more realistic performance from him in a scene where the boy is taunted and bullied, Gabriel instructs his castmates to let loose with real insults and flying fists, keeping the cameras rolling as Ryan takes a beating—all in the pursuit of cinematic realism.

Ryan and Gabriel walks pas the housing project.
Timéo Mahaut as Ryan and Johan Heldenbergh as Gabriel in The Worst Ones. Photo: courtesy Kino Lorber.

There’s more: fourteenish Lily (Mallory Manecque), who is cast as Ryan’s sister, has an earned reputation for boys-room blowjobs, a nonstop smoking habit, and a serious Jones for the crew’s thirtysomething sound man. She’s also in an on-and-off sexual relationship with Jessy (Loïc Pech), a smartass boy full of testosterone and smacktalk. Maylis (Melina Vanderplancke), meanwhile, a quiet butch girl who might have an eye for Lily, wants to quit midway through the production. Production assistant Judith (Esther Archambault) tries to befriend and mentor the young cast. But between resistance from the locals and the difficulties of working with children—none of whom have any experience onscreen—Gabriel’s production seems practically doomed.

Lily and Ryan exchange a glance in The Worst Ones.
Mallory Manecque as Lily and Timéo Mahaut as Ryan in The Worst Ones. Photo: courtesy Kino Lorber.

The director doesn’t do himself any favors, either. Gabriel’s film is rife with the clichés of traumatized-youth cinema—social and family violence, unplanned pregnancy, teen incarceration, and the like. He directs a love scene between Lily and Jessy with the two of them unclothed, no intimacy coordinator or coaching anywhere, a full crew hovering on top of them. It does not go well. Scenes like these confront viewers with the ethics of filmmaking, especially as regards minors. When Gabriel’s film seems to hinge on his successfully capturing a shot with hundred of pigeons released behind the predictably unpredictable Ryan—a risky one-take gambit—the whole project seems ready to descend into folly.

On its surface, this plot alone would make for an unconventional and challenging film. But Akoka and Gueret have added a whole next level of metatextuality to The Worst Ones. We see the young children behind the scenes, prepping for their roles and interacting with each other and their own families, intercut with scenes from Gabriel’s “Pissing” project. Sometimes we’re unsure which is which. Akoka and Geuret’s cast too are nonprofessionals themselves. Their task is difficult: they not only are playing versions of “The Worst Ones” cast, but they are also playing the characters as they cast in Gabriel’s film. It’s quite the ask of kids who’ve never been on camera.

They are without exception, fantastic. As little Ryan, Timéo Mahaut fidgets and fumbles about, seemingly incapable of focus—until he delivers an insight with an unpredictable, uncommon directness. As Jessy, Loïc Pech is full of fluster and bravado, but he also conveys just enough charm for us to see Lily’s attraction to him. And as Lily, Mallory Manecque is practically a revelation. Just growing into her body and sexuality, she knows already how to gain and keep a boy’s attention, but it’s clear she’s not fully in charge of her feelings, especially when she mistakes the sound man’s dancing skills for romantic affection. Akoka and Gueret may have discovered the actress at the gate of her school, but I hope she does more work in film: she’s practically bursting with potential.

Lily (Mallory Manecque) stares downward.
Mallory Manecque as Lily in The Worst Ones. Photo: courtesy Kino Lorber.

The self-reflexive approach here—filmmaking-about-filmmaking à la Day for Night (la nuite Americaine) or Living in Oblivion—does far more than provide just on-set insider insight. Rather, Akoka and Geuret’s approach highlights several thorny ethical issues about the type of film their fictional director is making. Does an outsider to a community like the fictional Flemish Gabriel have the right to impose his own personal experience on the subject? Does the community itself have a right to be represented in the way they desire? (They aren’t at all fond of the interloper’s focus on teen pregnancy and delinquency, especially when they’ve been working to improve the area’s profile.) What safeguards are in place to protect the young, or for that matter anyone who might not be sufficiently mature or empowered to protect themselves? And what obligation, for that matter, do filmmakers have to the communities they film, the actors, they hire—especially with this kind of “street casting” approach?

The film’s take on these matters is subtle and complex. Gabriel is not pilloried for his mistakes; he seems a sensitive, conflicted, genuine man who is deeply concerned with his young cast. And Akoka and Geuret do not really let themselves off the hook, either. It’s impossible not to recognize that, for instance, when Gabriel errs in shooting a too-intimate scene with nearly-naked teen actors under the sheets that Akoka and Geuret, too, are shooting the same, only with even more actors and crew involved. (If with the assistance of an on-set intimacy coordinator.) They, like Gabriel, have hired and are working with nonprofessional child actors and subject to every thorny ethical issue he confronts. Or ignores.

I do have to wonder whether my interpretation might be a little less charitable were it not for the bona fides Akoka and Geuret bring to the project as experienced child-casting and child-coaching collaborators. Were The Worst Ones made by a middle-aged man (a Gabriel, say) it might read as a defense of the very problematic directorial choices its protagonist makes; made by two women with direct experience with the matter (and a short film on the subject, to boot), its gentle, sometimes-humorous, and often-poignant critique of industry practice seems a fair one.

Jessy and Lily smile while in Gabriel's office.
Loïc Pech as Jessy and Mallory Manecque as Lily in The Worst Ones. Photo: courtesy Kino Lorber.

At times, viewers might wonder whether what they are watching is the “real” world of Akoka and Geuret’s composition or the “reel” scenario their fictional Gabriel is filming. There are no major contrasts in the way the two are shot: both of them are rendered in the same verité-style, eye-level handheld cinematography by Éric Dumont. Scenes depicting Ryan’s anger and Lily’s anguish are deeply affecting. And even though The Worst Ones‘ metatextual complexity is its most distinguishing feature, the film works its own narrative magic throughout, making a sincere investment in its cast of young, challenged, impoverished, and naively optimistic characters, each of them hoping for futures that are likely little more than mere fictions. They may be, as the neighborhood thinks, “the worst ones,” but they’re worth rooting for.

That, in itself, is a remarkable achievement, and for it, The Worst Ones is a remarkable film.


Kino Lorber presents The Worst Ones, opening Friday, March 24 in New York and March 31 in Los Angeles, with a national release to follow. 99 Minutes, in French with English subtitles.

Written by J Paul Johnson

J Paul Johnson is Publisher of Film Obsessive. A professor emeritus of film studies and an avid cinephile, collector, and curator, his interests range from classical Hollywood melodrama and genre films to world and independent cinemas and documentary.

Leave a Reply

Film Obsessive welcomes your comments. All submissions are moderated. Replies including personal attacks, spam, and other offensive remarks will not be published. Email addresses will not be visible on published comments.

Inland Empire Comes to Criterion on Blu-Ray

A man stands knee deep in a marsh in Infinite Sea

Infinite Sea’s Existential Sci-Fi Lacks a Penetrative Punch