lazarillo
I expected this film to be a racy teen sex comedy along the lines of other early 80's fare like "Little Darlings", the German film "Boarding School", or the French film "Girls" (which is ALSO only currently available in a German dub with no English subtitles). But this is actually a film about a pair of sisters (Desiree Nosbusch and Valerie Dumas), whose parents are divorcing after their father leaves their mother for a younger woman, and who plot together to try to repair their fractured family. This is a more innocent "coming-of-age" movie that at times plays like a teenage, non-identical-twin version of "The Parent Trap", but it is also a fairly realistic film about growing up that probably MOST resembles other sweet and innocent French films like "Peppermint Soda" (also about two sisters) or the later French teen film "La Boum" (which they used to show a lot in French class in American high schools).It does have some scenes that are perhaps not fit for a high school French class, like the topless skinny-dipping scene the other reviewer mentioned. But frankly this is nothing you wouldn't see today on a lot of European beaches (if you're the kind of pervert who goes there to ogle barely pubescent girls anyway). A lot of people (especially a lot of American people), make a big deal today about "underage nudity". But you're not going to get excited about seeing someone naked if you're not ALREADY attracted to them to begin with. And if you're really NOT attracted to them, some innocuous topless skinny-dipping shouldn't bother you. Besides, 18-year-old French beauty Valerie Kaprisky ALSO appears in the skinny-dipping scene, so I don't know why anyone would even be looking at the much younger Valerie Dumas.German actress Desiree Nosbusch, who plays the older sister, meanwhile would go to appear in the much more graphic, scandalous, and genuinely disturbing German horror film "Der Trance" a year later. I'll freely admit to being perverted enough that I kinda wished THIS film was more of a racy teen comedy with Desiree Nosbusch and Valerie Kaprisky having a contest to see who could lose their virginity first (but that probably would have taken five minutes and ended in a tie). It's kind of ironic that French films are always accused of being sex-minded when actually most French teen films are sweet and realistic and simply take the eventual loss of virginity for granted while it is the American films that often regard it as a raunchy quest for the Holy Grail. The raunchiest thing about this is if you put the French title in Google translator, it comes up as "Ice Cream with Two Balls"!
