bang gang a modern love story movie review

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With her debut feature, “Bang Gang,” Eva Husson captures the restless rhythms of adolescence—the push-pull of angst and boredom, of self-consciousness and the yearning to lose oneself completely.

The French writer/director has crafted an intimate snapshot of the modern life of privileged teens; the full title is, rather cheekily, “Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story),” although very little of it has to do with actual love. Thematically, Husson’s film most obviously calls to mind Larry Clark ’s “ Kids ,” while stylistically, it appears Husson is borrowing from every movie Sofia Coppola has ever made. (The filmmaker herself says in the press notes that Paul Thomas Anderson and Lars Von Trier were major influences; meanwhile, there’s one specific image straight out of “ The Graduate ” that’s become a cinematic shorthand for expressing youthful isolation.)

What “Bang Gang” lacks in originality, though, it makes up for with mood and technical prowess. Husson favors long, dreamlike tracking shots that take us inside the extreme lifestyle choice these teens have made, capturing images that are both playful and startling. In short, these high schoolers engage in booze-and-drug-infused orgies where the only rule is that there are no rules. (“It’s now or never!” is the battle cry that goes out on group texts announcing these pop-up bacchanals.)

But just as her camera roams about and the teens freely shuffle among partners, Husson’s story meanders in narrative perspective, and that lack of focus ultimately gives “Bang Gang” a feeling of emptiness. As it builds to a climax (if you will), her film should have been gripping; instead, it ends up feeling like a melancholy glimmer.

At the start, though, it couldn’t be more vivid or alive. 17-year-old Alex ( Finnegan Oldfield ) wanders around his massive, trashed house as girls make out with each other, guys play naked foosball and people of both sexes cavort in various positions as electronic music thumps. Flashing back two months earlier, we learn the origin of these wild parties; they basically started as an attempt to make Alex jealous.

The beautiful, blonde George ( Marilyn Lima ), a pouty-lipped sexpot in the tradition of Brigitte Bardot , slept with Alex one day after school while their mutual friends Laetitia ( Daisy Broom ) and Nikita ( Fred Hotier ) watched. With his divorced mother away in Morocco for nine months, the wealthy Alex is alone and taking advantage of the freedom. (This extends to his downtime, in which he gets high on the couch and absent-mindedly watches rhythmic gymnastics on TV.)

But he’s also a callous, serial womanizer, and so when he repeatedly ignores George’s texts and calls, she finds a drastic way to get his attention: by suggesting an all-dare version of Truth or Dare during one of their clique’s afternoon hangouts. It starts innocently enough but quickly escalates, leading to a members-only website and private, explicit Instagram photos and videos, all connected by a catchy name: The Bang Gang.

Even before the group gropes begin, Husson is rather matter-of-fact about what must be a generational comfort with nudity, sexuality and pornography. These kids are quick to strip down and go skinny-dipping or wrestle on the beach, as if the sheer tension of being a teenager is enough to make them want to explode. Meanwhile, all around them, a heat wave is rising and on the news there’s nothing but reports of train derailments and violence. Husson makes the pressure palpable from all sides.

A supporting character, the introverted, aspiring musician Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefebvre), finds his own sense of release by thrashing about at secret dance parties until both George and Laetitia drag him into visiting the Bang Gang. Being the film’s voice of reason and the most mature one of the bunch, he finds it all appalling. And aside from the sultry George, he’s the most compelling character in the film because he’s been afforded some actual complexity.

Husson herself, however, doesn’t seem to be judging any of these kids for their actions. While several of them suffer some form of consequence for their recklessness, it doesn’t feel like punishment but rather part of the learning process—just part of growing up. And there will be no slut-shaming here, even though female promiscuity abounds. As the club’s initiator and one of its most fervent participants, George is a strong young woman who consistently makes decisions for herself—up to the film’s very last shot, which offers a vague glimpse of hope and even romance.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) (2016)

Marilyn Lima as George

Daisy Broom as Laetitia

Finnegan Oldfield as Alex

Lorenzo Lefèbvre as Gabriel

Fred Hotier as Nikita

Cinematographer

• Mattias Troelstrup
• Anders Refn
• Morgan Kibby

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Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

• By David Fear

It is, of course, a time-honored tradition of French cinema to feature nude, nubile young bodies in the name of oh-la-la sensationalism (see Bardot, Brigitte). So let’s say it’s not entirely surprising that, within the first 30 seconds of writer-director Eva Husson’s drama about high school sex parties in Southern France, you will see a butt-naked young woman sprint out of a suburban house. Inside that home, things are hitting maximum steaminess: females make out with each other for a crowd of horny onlookers, teens film other teens fucking each other, au naturel adolescents spin bottles and cross boundaries. Bodies gyrate and grind in every corner of the screen. Before a “Two Months Earlier” title card jarringly signals a narrative rewind, you might forget you’re watching “A Modern Love Story” — ironic subtitle, anybody? — and think you’ve stumbled into a revival screening of Caligula.

Our tour guides to this world are Laetitia (Daisy Bloom) and George (Marilyn Lima), two friends who occupy complementary good girl/bad girl archetypes: The latter is bottle-blond and boy-crazy, apt to invite herself over to a hot classmate’s house, and her mousy friend is more likely to blush when that classmate’s buddy drops trou and literally swings his dick around. George is the first one to succumb to the sleazy charms of Alex (Thomas Finnegan), a local Lothario whose mom is in Morocco for the next month or so. (Parents are either angry cranks or absent altogether.) Later, after he’s grown bored with his conquest, the teen then turns his attention to Laetitia, buttering her up with such choice pickup lines as “You remind me of an actress from the 1980s, I forget her name.” Jealousy causes George to turn a house party into an afterschool orgy, which signals the beginning of what the kids start calling the “Bang Gang.”  Cue more barely-legal group sex than a vintage Abercrombie & Fitch ad.

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You know that consequences, regrets and a mysterious school-wide epidemic of syphilis are just around the corner, and there’s a strong “parents, do you know where your enfants are?!” vibe to the sexed-up sixteen-and-under shenanigans. But Bang Gang is ultimately less interested in simply regurgitating torn-from-the-headlines handwringing than tentatively exploring how her two heroines are affected by the hedonistic free-for-all environment they find themselves in. The shy Laetitia seems to feel empowered by the debauchery while George, smitten by a neighbor/musician (Lorenzo Lefebvre) who prefers living-room moshpit parties, starts wishing she’d never opened this sex-party Pandora’s box even before a requisite YouTube shaming.

Husson clearly has sympathy for them both, and if her methods of getting into the secret lives of these complicated young women occasionally feel like borrowed Dreamy Cinema 101 — slo-mo running about, a drony pop/EDM soundtrack, naturally lit shots that go a lens flare too far — she’s still interested in these youngsters as more than just cautionary-tale symbols or fresh meat to be ogled. Folks on the festival circuit have referred to it as a Gallic version of Kids, but the comparison is more illustrative than apt. Larry Clark’s bad-behavior masterpiece was the movie equivalent of a raging dude boner; Husson’s movie is as much a hormonal mess as its characters, but at least it favors heart over hard-ons.

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Review: ‘Bang Gang,’ Seaside Orgies to a Soundtrack of Yawns

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By Stephen Holden

• June 16, 2016

What is distinctively contemporary about the French director Eva Husson ’s teenage sex film, “Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story,” is its characters’ nonchalance. This portrait of middle-class teenagers fueled by Ecstasy, cocaine and pot, whiling away the hours and having group sex during a long hot summer in Biarritz, France, is remarkable for its shrugging attitude. Opposite in spirit to a shocker like Larry Clark’s “Kids,” “Bang Gang” doesn’t aim to titillate or to alarm.

These average-looking kids in their mid-to-late teens don’t have the sculpted bodies of models or porn stars. Even when their activities get out of hand and a video of one female participant is posted on YouTube, there is no condemnation or generalized panic. Pleasant as it is to look at nubile bodies entwined, the sex they have conveys little passion or erotic charge. The camera virtually yawns at all the goings-on.

To be clinical: There are brief scenes of two girls kissing, but the action is mostly mundane, nonacrobatic boy-girl sex. Except for a scene in which one mischievous boy strips naked by a swimming pool, genitalia — both male and female — are not seen.

The initiator of games that evolve into orgies is George (Marilyn Lima), who is piqued when the group’s callous ringleader, Alex (Finnegan Oldfield), treats her with indifference after they hook up, and decides to stir things up. Games that begin as spin the bottle and truth or dare slowly turn into sex parties at Alex’s house while his parents are away. Even when copulating, Alex seems bored with it all.

The story shifts between the perspectives of George and her friend Laetitia (Daisy Broom), and Alex plays one against the other. Contrasted with Alex is Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefebvre), an earnest aspiring electronic composer and neighbor of Laetitia’s.

“Bang Gang” goes out of its way to avoid stereotyping. Where a Hollywood equivalent would almost certainly punish George, “Bang Gang” refuses to designate clear-cut heroes and villains. Its blasé attitude, however, goes only so far, as the group activity results in venereal disease and an unwanted pregnancy. But the world doesn’t end. There are quick, easy solutions: antibiotics and abortion. It’s no big deal. As one girl observes after the fact, it almost feels as if it never happened.

“Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story” is not rated. It is in French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes.

Toronto Film Review: ‘Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)’

This sexy debut by AFI-trained French director Eva Husson owes a debt to such controversial adolescent group portraits as 'The Virgin Suicides' and 'Kids.'

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Set amid a recent(ish) French heatwave, likely 2003, Eva Husson ’s steamy “ Bang Gang ” is the story of a girl named George who sincerely believes she has invented the concept of the swingers party, as told by a young director who acquits herself as if Larry Clark, Gus Van Sant and a coupla Coppola gals haven’t already made the same movie. That’s not to say that Husson brings nothing new to the mix, although her sun-kissed, pastel-hued collage of half-naked adolescents cavorting free from their Biarritz parents’ ambivalent eyes feels less shocking than it does personal. While the skin factor alone should ensure prurient curiosity among festival and VOD auds, it’s more interesting to speculate how much of herself Husson is exposing in this supposedly fact-based, clearly ironic “modern day love story” — and to fantasize what this fearless talent might do next.

Originally tipped as a possible Cannes selection, “Bang Gang” instead premieres in Toronto’s new competitive Platform strand, trading the likely dismissal of a blase Croisette crowd for what are sure to be more receptive reactions, given Toronto’s long-standing rep as a fest where watching naked French teens swap sexual favors never goes out of style. (The French themselves aren’t so easily seduced, having just witnessed Helene Zimmer’s “Being 14” push those same buttons, albeit not so explicitly, with a far-younger ensemble.)

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The novelty with “Bang Gang” — which is dedicated to a long list of male filmmakers, with particular thanks to “Men who love strong women. Thanks for helping me become one” — is the extent to which Husson’s take may be considered “feminist.” D.p. (and fellow AFI grad) Mattias Troelstrup’s camera ogles the onscreen boys and girls alike, visually framing this memory through the shifting vantage of two teenage girls, timid Laetitia (Daisy Broom) and her more aggressively sex-hungry best friend George (Marilyn Lima), while privileging the group’s worst offender, Alex (Finnegan Oldfield, recently seen in Thomas Bidegain’s “Les Cowboys”), with a “The Virgin Suicides”-style voiceover that sounds as if it was written and added at a very late stage.

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One indolent afternoon, the two girls find themselves hanging out by Alex’s pool. He’s a weaselly young man whose face seems permanently twisted into a distrustful scowl, but his seductive skills seem downright classy compared to red-headed pal Nikita (Fred Hotier), who strips down immediately, then begs Laetitia to help keep him warm. Alex’s strategy is to get George alone and then insult her best friend, claiming to find George far more desirable — a ruse she falls for almost instantly (Alex will try the opposite line on Laetitia later, with equivalent success).

For the moment, however, audiences raised on the chastity-thumping morality of American horror movies (not that this is one, far from it, but that’s the genre where such pretty young things most consistently face consequences for their lusty slip-ups) will peg George as the slutty one and Laetitia as the innocent. Such labels don’t apply for long once the big “bang gang” explosion occurs, however.

Shocked that Alex doesn’t return her phone calls or text messages after their hook-up, George comes up with a scheme designed to make him jealous: Though all she really wants is Alex to herself, George suggests to a group of classmates gathered in his living room that they raise the stakes on their lame games of “Spin the Bottle” and “Truth or Dare” and try a version that’s nothing but dares. In short order, this extracurricular hang-out session has turned into a group hook-up — one that’s so popular with all who participated that the other kids at school want in, flocking to Alex’s house anytime a kick-off text message (“it’s now or never!” they claim) goes ’round.

This is precisely the fantasy Abercrombie & Fitch has been selling all these years, as  “Bang Gang” recreates the sort of predominately white, ambisexual summertime orgies that filled its early-2000s catalogs, complete with carefree skinny dipping and drunk, naked teens huddled around the foosball table. Not everyone in George’s class wants in on the fun, however, and the movie holds a special regard for Laetitia’s shy next door neighbor, Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefebvre), an awkward, amateur electronic-music mixer (the film’s entrancing soundtrack, by L.A.-based snyth-pop siren White Sea, is one of those hip touches that should get Husson more work, likely directing musicvideos or fashion campaigns). While his classmates bang-gang, Gabriel lets off steam in his own way, seeking out local “beat parties” where he can dance out his frustrations.

Gabriel is one of a couple characters who, without explanation, turn and gaze directly into the camera at a certain point, and one suspects that Husson originally tried this approach with others as well, though the film bears the traces of having been heavily reworked in editing. While the film’s fluid, free-roaming perspective gives things a dreamy feel, as if these adolescent love-ins (which Husson semi-explicitly teases from the film’s flash-forward first scene) all took place in some alcohol- and ecstasy-clouded reverie, the lack of a single clear character with whom to identify ultimately proves problematic.

Though Husson is predictably obliged to affix a cautionary scarlet letter on her teen libertines, as the school’s entire graduating class is subjected to mandatory syphilis testing in a scene that recalls Clark’s “Kids,” her judgment isn’t targeted so much at George, who started it all, but Alex, whom George holds responsible. Rather than getting back at this one boy in particular, a more effective cut of the film would put us inside the various characters’ heads, giving us the chance to identify with both their selfish impulses and the consequences of such teenage egotism (the way Roger Avary’s “The Rules of Attraction” did at roughly the time the film is set), whereas this one shifts focus as casually as its characters swap partners.

Reviewed at Unifrance screening room, Paris, Aug. 2015. (In Toronto Film Festival — competing.) Running time: 98 MIN. (Original title: “Bang Gang (une histoire d’amour moderne)”)

• Production: (France) An Ad Vitam (in France) release of a Full House, a label of Maneki Films and Borsalino Prods. production, presented in association with b Media 2012, B Media Developpement, Backup Media, with the participation of Canal Plus, Ocs, CNC, with the support of Region Aquitaine, Department Pyrenees Atlantiques, Procirep, Palatine Etoile 10 Developpement, in collaboration with Agency ECLA/Commission du Film Aquitaine. (International sales: Films Distribution, Paris.) Produced by Didar Domehri, Laurent Baudens, Gael Nouaille.
• Crew: Directed, written by Eva Husson. Camera (color, widescreen), Mattias Troelstrup; editor, Emilie Orsini; music, White Sea; production designer, David Bersanetti; costume designer, Julie Brones; sound, Olivere Le Vacon; assistant director, Sophie Davin; casting, Bahijja El Amrani.
• With: Finnegan Oldfield, Daisy Broom, Fred Hotier, Lorenzo Lefebvre, Marilyn Lima.

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Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) Reviews

The director, also a screenwriter, fails to make any character interesting. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 22, 2019

Overall the teenage relationships aren't really delineated, a moralistic twist near the end appears out of nowhere, as does the sudden, unrealistic pairing-up of two of the main characters that gives the film the justification for its subtitle.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 5, 2019

Bang Gang's shock value comes from the sense of the audience being included in something private, in joining in with some middle-class French kids learning about themselves through sexual play.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2018

It is, however, a stunning and realistic portrait of finding oneself between the abyss of childhood and adulthood with a future that doesn't necessarily end in happily ever after.

Full Review | Aug 6, 2018

A reaffirmation of romantic values and mutual understanding, above communal failure, discouragement and a general sense of emptiness. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Sep 20, 2017

The cinematography manages to project the intimacy of this portion of life that these teenagers will remember as a dream. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2017

If the Bang Gang springs from loneliness and insecurity, why don't we see moments of vulnerability between any of the characters?

Full Review | Aug 14, 2017

When she's at her sharpest, [director Eva Husson] permits both her characters and viewers free rein to think and feel their way through this particular moral maze as they see fit

Full Review | Dec 31, 2016

... neither shocking nor insightful as it scrutinizes the recklessness of contemporary teens with appropriate cynicism.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2016

As the synth score shimmers over the sex binges, any risk of exploitation is offset by explorations of social media, a female POV and bold performances, notably from Marilyn Lima.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2016

Bang Gang is yet another example of a shallow European art film masquerading as something weightier than it actually is.

Full Review | Jul 12, 2016

This portrait of disaffected youth doing drugs and having sex feels silly in the wrong ways, with its heavy handed art house naturalism unable to sort out where and when to put its weight tonally and emotionally.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 29, 2016

Surprising, invigorating and sharply frank.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2016

A so-so tale of liberation getting out of hand.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 20, 2016

An ironic, sun-kissed salute to teen spirit and a long, hot Biarritz summer of sex, seduction and damaging consequences.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 19, 2016

There's a rather pushy aggressiveness in the tone that, in everything that follows, seems more designed to shock and appall rather than engage on any human level.

Full Review | Jun 17, 2016

Husson captures the restless rhythms of adolescence-the push-pull of angst and boredom, of self-consciousness and the yearning to lose oneself completely.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2016

A bit too superficial in its conclusions on modern adolescence to be remembered.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2016

Frank and fairly explicit, the events nevertheless unfold through a prism of sensitivity and compassion, with Husson sidestepping the sensationalism suggested by the provocative title and subject matter.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 16, 2016

Remarkable for its shrugging attitude. Opposite in spirit to a shocker like Larry Clark's "Kids," "Bang Gang" doesn't aim to titillate or to alarm.

Full Review | Jun 16, 2016

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Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story

Studio: samuel goldwyn films directed by eve husson.

“[It was] the year of the Bang Gangs,” Alex (Finnegan Oldfield) tells us over narration. This just after a flash-forward to a tracking shot through a house packed with teenagers in varying degrees of nakedness, intoxication, and debaucherousness. The title becomes self-explanatory after the shot and piece of narration, but it’s hard to discern to what degree it’s aware of its own corniness. If inner city kids transgressing the supposed bounds of all that is good and pure wasn’t really your thing in the early 1990s in America, the question for Eva Husson’s film Bang Gang ends up being, “What will make it interesting if it’s bourgeois suburban French teens?”

What exactly has changed since Larry Clark’s provocative film Kids in 1995? It’s been over two decades since that film was released, but while its approaches to adolescent sexuality, drug use, STDs, and abuse were once shocking and maybe gauche, it is hard, at least from the perspective of an American, to really transgress those boundaries anymore. New lines have been made, new bars set, and while Kids would probably be scrutinized for different reasons (its depictions of class, race, and gender are still worthy of being analyzed), there’s a certain amount of desensitization certain sectors of cultural consumers have experienced, especially those that are inclined to watch Kids or Bang Gang in the first place.

The organization of teenager sex parties or orgies is neither shocking realistically nor narratively, but what does matter is the amount of agency the film’s female characters are given and how that impacts our perception of adolescent sexuality, as well as its general role within film history in general. Though Bang Gang ostensibly sets Alex as its narrator, the film primarily focuses on friends George (Marilyn Lima) and Laetitia (Daisy Broom) and how they navigate these sex and drug addled spaces. Unfortunately, such navigation is not particularly interesting, transgressions or no.

What has changed dramatically since 1995 is the way young people engage with sex and with their own identities: the proliferation of social media has heavily impacted the way young people construct their identities, sexual and otherwise, and Bang Gang ’s subtitle, A Modern Love Story might best be applied to these characters’ adoration for self-expression via metaphysical, digital means. At these orgies, internet porno is projected onto the wall, the participants unconsciously mimicking the actions in the videos. Characters take selfies, film each other having sex, live their most deviant lives as much online as in person. It’s a confirmation, not necessarily an affirmation, of these characters trying to prod what little interest in life they have left, given that, in all sectors, their engagement is at a minimum.

But this portrait of disaffected youth doing drugs and having sex feels silly in the wrong ways, with its heavy handed art house naturalism unable to sort out where and when to put its weight tonally and emotionally. A scene in which a bunch of kids are notified that they have contracted sexually transmitted diseases is played like everyone is receiving news that they have a month to live. In a post Skins , Spring Breakers , and Party Monster world, Bang Gang needs more to truly be the new Kids on the block.

Author rating: 5 /10

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The title becomes self-explanatory after the shot and piece of narration, but it’s hard to discern to what degree it’s aware of its own corniness.

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Review: bang gang: a modern love story.

Eva Husson’s controversy-courting debut is neither as lewdly subversive or as raucously debauched as its provocative title.

Eva Husson’s controversy-courting Bang Gang is a total turn-off that’s neither as lewdly subversive or as raucously debauched as its provocative title. Living out their own summer of love, a group of gauche high school students get together for private sex parties that play to phallocentric fantasies of three girls for every guy. Bridget Bardot-lookalike George (Marilyn Lima) is the one who instigates a game of “Truth or Dare with only dares,” just to get back at uninvolved boyfriend Alex (Finnegan Oldfield), who, at that moment, is upstairs taking the virginity of her best friend, Letitia (Daisy Broom). But instead of being appalled, unfazed Alex blithely takes ownership of George being railed by multiple partners, assuming host duties for the subsequent orgies and literally becoming the cock of the walk.

Initially, classmates all strip off with playful inhibition, but in the subsequent shuffling of body parts and soft-focus writhing, there’s almost no recognition of teenage logic; not one member of the Bang Gang is portrayed as shy or thinned-skinned, as almost any high schooler would be, standing stark bollock naked among their peers. At their age, everybody is trying to be something other than what they are, but if sexual liberation and nonjudgmental exploration enables the group to transcend the awkwardness of these years, then they never seem hungry for this experience. The somnambulist gaze of Mattias Troelstrup’s cinematography has no rapture, and the cast performs very much like the cool, closed-off, yet easily readable, adolescents of the movies, and not the volatile mood swingers of real life, far more earnest in their instinct for self-created drama.

Not enough of Bang Gang lives in the eyes of George and her classmates. As the camera floats, ethereally indifferent, past contorted bodies, White Sea’s melancholic electro score throbs despairingly when it should hedonistically thrust, and the formal exhibitionism of fourth-wall breaks and assorted voiceovers feels way more explicit than any of the sex. The film, subtitled “a modern love story,” is full of digital details that also seem suspiciously off, with a video of George giving herself to all takers finding its way onto YouTube and not some darker, more damaging corner of the Internet, like the one in which Sasha Grey is glimpsed during the early scenes, and from which the content cannot be so easily flagged as inappropriate and quickly removed.

Offering no social critique of generation selfie, the film has the unfortunate distinction of premiering during the 20th anniversary year of Larry Clark’s Kids causing a “cultural blitzkrieg” upon its release, and is unlikely to be remembered with anywhere near the same notoriety a year from now.

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Timothy Evans is a heavy metal cinephile living in Heavy metal cinephile living in Ashford, England.

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Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

A bunch of teenagers get saucy in the summertime.

Time Out says

Picture one of those pervy, porny American Apparel ads made into a French arthouse movie. Now imagine that the director has watched Larry Clark’s ‘Kids’ on replay. Voila! You have ‘Bang Gang’, a clammy drama set during a French heatwave as a bunch of rich teenagers discover the joie de group sex. The story revolves around quiet Laetitia (Daisy Broom) and her Brigitte Bardot lookalike friend George (Marilyn Lima) as they smoke joints and skive off school. Before you can say ennui, the girls are hanging around with a bunch of kids who organise group hook-ups on Snapchat – they call themselves Bang Gang. It’s refreshing to see a movie like this directed by a woman, Eva Husson, so boys and girls are objectified equally. Which is not to say this passes the feminism test. The movie finishes with a hot naked girl pouring her boyfriend a cup of freshly brewed coffee – an image so comedy-French it’s hard to be offended.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 17 June 2016
• Duration: 98 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Eva Husson
• Screenwriter: Eva Husson
• Finnegan Oldfield
• Lorenzo Lefèbvre
• Marilyn Lima

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Film Festivals

Bang gang (a modern love story) review.

• Oct 8, 2015

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) review: Eva Husson delivers a well directed, well presented, and sure to be much talked about debut feature.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) plays in the First Feature Competition at this year’s BFI London Film Festival . Originating from France, first-time director and screenwriter Eva Husson delivers an almost unofficial, updated version of Larry Clark’s infamous 1990s movie Kids , with added elements from the YouTube and social media generation.

Featuring a cast of newcomers, the film revolves around a group of school kids who invent their own ‘orgy club,’ known as the Bang Gang . The kids unite in the home of Alex, whose parents are away in northern Africa on an archaeological expedition. When they come together, they start off by drinking, taking drugs and partaking in a game of truth or dare, albeit without the truth part. The teenagers awaken their sexuality, and over the coming weeks swap partners and partake in all sorts of liberating, sexual antics, without necessarily thinking about any kind of consequence for their actions.

Husson’s film is really well put together. Featuring a brilliant electro soundtrack, breathtaking cinematography and a real rawness to it, it doesn’t shy away from any taboos from the off. It doesn’t pull any punches either in terms of what we see on screen, and actually some scenes are really quite explicit in their nature. It’s captivating, deeply moving in places, as well funny, and really well performed by its group of young actors, who fearlessly embark on a really quite brave debut journey. Some of them, particularly the two young actresses,  Marilyn Lima and Daisy Bloom , who lead this picture, are definitely names to look out for in the future; as too is Husson, who has delivered a well directed, well presented, and sure to be much talked about debut feature, even if the final reel falls a little flat.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) review by Paul Heath at the BFI London Film Festival, 2015.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) plays on 8th October, 2015, at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival .

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Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

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Release date

17 th June 2016

Eva Husson debuts her first feature film Bang Gang , a dreamy picture that follows the lives of five French teenagers in the midst of a heatwave. Husson manages to create a visually stunning piece of work that captures life through the eyes of her characters. The film begins with two friends: George (a striking blonde who captures the attention of her male counterparts through her confidence and sexual appetite) and her best friend, Laetitia, an introverted girl who contrasts with George in both looks and values. The viewer embarks on a journey with the teenagers as they change and grow.

The theme of sexuality is palpable; it weaves itself around the structure of the whole film and is present in every scene – whether subtle or not. Although it’s not a new concept, Husson adds a refreshing new stance on the subject in the way she reserves judgement on her characters. The unapologetic actions of her characters are meant to highlight the carelessness of youth and not reprimand them.  Sexuality has always been a difficult subject to broach, but Husson abandons that notion and dives in at the deep end. The story follows the two girls as they befriend Nikta (Fred Hotier) and Alex (Finnegan Oldfield). Not long after they become acquainted, a series of events concludes in the creation of the Bang Gang, which entails a house full of sweaty teenagers engaging in drug use and raw sexual activity that ends disastrously.

The mesmerising quality of this film manifests via its beautiful dream-like shots. The colour and the lighting are deliberate and essential to the plot and just as exciting as the narrative itself.

Husson’s directorial debut is strong. Via an examination of the relationship made between teenagers and sex, it puts a modern spin on the age-old experience of being a teenager and dealing with loneliness.

Aisha Mohamed

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)  is released in selected cinemas  on 17 th June 2016.

Watch the trailer   for  Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)  here:

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BANG GANG (A MODERN LOVE STORY): "It's Brutal For This Generation," Says Director Eva Husson

Somewhat frighteningly, Eva Husson’s  Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story is loosely based on a true story from 1996. During one particularly hot summer, a series of terrible accidents afflicted the French railways and a spate of teenage orgies really did take hold of a small, provincial French community. This explosive summer clearly piqued Husson’s creative impulses, and the film she created is now often being touted as a provocative erotica.

Let us not pigeon-hole Husson’s thought-provoking drama, though.  Bang Gang ’s beautifully controlled palette of seductive sunset pinks and blues definitely helps it achieve a classy artistic intimacy (in what could have been just a pornographic check-list of things teenagers probably get up to these days).

And a bit like Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, this film is importantly about the role that misspent youth has in shaping us all. So rather than ending in some kind of moralistic post-Code punishment, Husson’s movie is very much about showing how pushing the limits in this new age of Tinder and internet sex culture is often a defining part of many of our lives today.

ScreenAnarchycaught up with Husson to discuss this at the London Film Festival, and her film is now being distributed in UK cinemas by Metrodome Distribution . [It opens in the U.S. on Friday, June 17.]

ScreenAnarchy: I was wondering whether you had seen Larry Clark’s THE SMELL OF US , and whether you thought your film was comparable to it?

Eva Husson : No, I haven’t unfortunately. I made a point of not watching it, actually. I didn’t want to be influenced.

That’s interesting. So what do you make of the comparisons that have been made between your film and Larry Clark’s KIDS ?

To be honest I was scared of this comparison at first, because I was worried that people would go into the film thinking that the relationships in it come from the same kind of rawness that it does in Kids . Or that they would think it would be filmed in the same sort of full-frontal way that Kids was.

But actually I’m taking it more as a sort of compliment now. I suppose, in terms of themes and the film’s ability to go back and explore extreme things from youth – even if I’m doing it twenty years later – I guess that kind of comparison is a positive one.

We also shouldn’t forget that at the time, Kids was extremely… valid. It was exploring that spectre of death which followed you if you were a teenager in the 90s. Basically, you wouldn’t have sex without a condom at that time, because you could catch AIDs and die from making love. That really was such a big part of who we were. I mean, I was nineteen when I first saw Kids , and it felt like the film of a generation for me.

So how did this influence you?

I guess it really made me try to think in about what it means to kids today to make love. I think for them it means something very different now. I mean, if something goes wrong, they don’t even have to care, because they always have a second chance - there are so many effective treatments now.

I think I also had to think a lot about young people’s relationship to drugs now, because they seem a lot more accessible now to me. I get the impression that they’re even more mainstream now than they were twenty years ago.

When Larry Clark presented THE SMELL OF US  at the Venice Film Festival, he said he had finally managed to capture those kinds of changes in French youth today. But I actually don’t think he did at all. So I was wondering whether you thought you had managed it?

Erm… Well, I would say that my film is a very extreme version of reality. And it’s a version of reality that 99% of young people in France won’t recognise. However, that’s why it was interesting to me. I thought it would be very intriguing to explore something that intense, that extreme.

I wanted to talk about adolescence and how things can go so far during that time. The way that, you know, all those kinds of things build your identity as an adult. It was that process that I was really interested in.

What do you think made you so interested in this?

Well, I suppose it had to do with the fact I originally came from quite a small town, called Le Havre, in Normandie. When I grew up there we were very bored and middle-class – you know, not specifically drawn to anything in particular. So when I read the news article about this story, I thought “Shit! That could have happened to us!” I immediately began to wonder how you could go from being a very middle-class, average kid, to that.

I mean, I did have quite an intense adolescence but, you know, there wasn’t any collective sex! I did a lot of drugs, explored a lot of things, and travelled a lot – but no orgies. So I was curious how that leap might happen. But I also think doing all these things hasn’t made me a more unstable adult, or you know, a more damaged adult. So that was also something I wanted to explore in this case.

I think a lot of time, when you get a picture about intense youth, the kids almost always get really damaged, or die or stuff like that. I don’t believe in that at all. I think pretty much everybody I know who had those kinds of experiences came out… err… saner, you know?  Okay they went really far, found their limits (because they didn’t know the limits), but then they were better for it. It was just an exploration of the limits.

But why do you think you’re so specifically drawn to stories about adolescence?

I think that probably has to do with the fact that I was a teenager until I was about thirty-five. [ Laughs. ] But I think I’m also always just using youth as a starting point. I think Bang Gang had a lot to do with observing the general decadence of society.

You might talk about it in terms of this kind of French aristocratic tradition, but for me it’s much more about the middle classes and decadence of democracy. I think we’re all so bored in our current democracies that these are the only limits that we can push. But yeah, so many of these limits have already been pushed, so pushing them now doesn’t even really have the same kind of relevance.

I think once I got past that, I still realised that there’s lots of things that are happening in the world now, and I thought it would be interesting to see how these kinds of changes affect us.

Like exploring the impact of pornography on young people?

Honestly? …I couldn’t care less. Porn is just part of the story, because you can’t talk about youth nowadays without talking about porn. So I did my homework. [ Laughs. ] I really mean that too. [ Giggles. ] It was very tedious at times actually, but you have to just, erm… face it?

I honestly don’t envy young people now. When I was a teenager, the first time I saw a penis was in a magazine. And it was far away and I could just close it. I didn’t then really come across another one until later in life.

Now, I think when you’re ten or even seven or eight, these kinds of images are just thrown at you – and you’re not mature enough to deal with it at that age, I think. I think that the movie deals with that too: Adolescents who don’t necessarily have the tools to cope yet. My characters go too far, and they have to adjust as a result. They have to adapt to what’s thrown at them, and this generation has to do that a lot, I think.

So you think digital culture is having a negative impact on young people today?

I don’t know, but one thing I did notice is that young people now have a very different relationship to the image or the self-image – to these kinds of representations of themselves. Young people now are always representing themselves as being cool or really great, and balancing this kind of image is really not that easy a thing to deal with. Especially when you’re growing up, as it’s already a really hard time.

It’s a hard enough task as it is just to grow up. So if on top of that you have a social context that is extremely hard to deal with, well then I guess you’re bound to have some moments that are explosive.

So do you think BANG GANG taps into the Zeitgeist of the current generation?

Well, in terms of modern times, I do think we are in the middle of a revolution. Kids now have all these new tools, and it’s like the printing revolution of the Gutenberg Press, you know? But it’s also just different, and people are just having to start learn the limits again.

I honestly just think it’s brutal for this generation, because they’re the ones having to negotiate this new territory.  I think that’s why the “modern” element in my subtitle “A Modern Love Story” is so important. I mean, the original news article is from 1996, so the story is actually not that new, but I thought the modern element – of social media – was going to be so present for kids.

Actually, I have a friend who worked on this film, and she recently told me that her 14-year old daughter (who lives in Paris) had had a similar experience at, erm… I don’t know, how do you call it… middle school? She’s 14, and they had a very similar game. This game had a name, and you know, the girls involved felt like they should really go for it – because otherwise they were excluded.

This girl showed her mother all the pictures, and it was insane because my friend was saying how suddenly she had all these images from the film right in front of her. Except they were real and on Instagram. She couldn’t believe it, because she thought that we had gone really far with this film, but in reality this film is exactly sort of thing that can happen now.

More from Around the Web

• Official UK Site: Metrodome Distribution
• Official Facebook Page: BANG GANG

More about Bang Gang

• Review: BANG GANG (A MODERN LOVE STORY), Writhing Young Things, Experimenting
• Toronto 2015 Review: BANG GANG, Teen Sex Without The Histrionics

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[TIFF Review] Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

A post-9/11 world rife with domestic terrorism is one our youth should be allowed to avoid. Parents seek an escape as well, though, something that risks leaving their kids alone without supervision for longer than recommended. This concept is never more prevalent than within the affluent sector of society where expendable income and exotic jobs leave a ton of latchkey children trying to defeat boredom. Internet connectivity provides whatever their hearts desire, freedom the ample opportunity to do as they please. Social pressures must be relieved and sex is easily the quickest and cheapest way to do so.

Maturity, however, renders such a laissez faire attitude problematic, especially when physical release isn’t the initial purpose of their pleasure. Eva Husson ‘s Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) begins with the alternative: love. George ( Marilyn Lima ) doesn’t anticipate it as Alex ( Finnegan Oldfield ) was meant to merely be her latest conquest, but feelings force their way in. He’s less interested, playing games by ignoring her until he knows rekindled contact will guarantee another carnal encounter. And in great adolescent fashion she rejects her idea of love in order to ignore the pain of his indifference, blowing it off with best friend Laetitia ( Daisy Broom ) until she reads the response as a green light to take her own turn with him.

Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned and George’s pain evolves into hatred alongside a conniving spirit to find untargeted revenge. If sex has become no holds barred, why not sanction it with a game? Alex’s friends are pretty much up for anything so she feeds that desire with a hardcore version of spin the bottle. Hormones flow and everyone pairs off in an orgy no one could have anticipated when they walked through the door—all to make Alex look at her again. It’s so successful that more and more are planned. The numbers increase, a private website publishes photos and videos, and experimentation turns to consensual pornography. Despite the bacchanal, though, George cannot shake Laeti’s betrayal.

It’s a coming-of-age tale with consequences more serious than being ridiculed in front of classmates. The stakes here can ruin lives and the decision of so many participants to openly post documentation online is asking for trouble. If only George and Laeti could simply talk out their issues rather than delve deeper into the anonymous limbs writhing within every room of Alex’s house, things might be different. But when guys like Nikita ( Fred Hotier ) are more than ready to satisfy this sexual contest’s call for players—a contest Laetitia leads the charge of despite being a blushing virgin at the start—and cupid’s arrow continues striking at will, there will be no end until the devastating bottom drops.

Sex becomes their weapon to combat society and forget terrorism like the news’ train de-railings. Their sexuality is something they own that their parents cannot touch and they’ve found themselves embracing its power. Husson’s film isn’t just a highly produced porn, though, as each character is allowed reasons for taking off their clothes. Laeti is sick of her over-bearing father (who actually isn’t); Alex is lonely with his mother working in Morocco; and on-the-fringe-player Gabriel ( Lorenzo Lefèbvre ) is dealing with the tragic accident that left his father paralyzed and in need of constant supervision. A single, secluded empty house gives them a playground and all that’s in their way is jealousy and ego.

Love itself isn’t often lingered upon besides carefully placed reaction shots of pained expression, breathing life into those stubborn survival instincts kicking in to escalate the fun. This ensures the pace never slows from a wildly memorable opening tracking shot through Alex’s home with cinematographer Mattias Troelstrup weaving around bodies in disparate states of undress talking, dancing, and engaging in every sex act imaginable. It’s an intriguing glimpse at the future before rewinding a couple months previous because this liberating scene of teenage magnetism isn’t quite as uninhibited and no-strings-attached as it seems. We don’t yet know what these faces reveal because we haven’t yet learned what’s pushed them to the brink.

Artfully shot and directed with a killer soundtrack of synth beats cranking the visuals up and down in rhythm, Bang Gang delivers on its promise of modern love. While an authentic evolutionary conclusion to the actions onscreen eventually arrives, I can’t help feel it’s too harsh a halt. Everything’s at such a fever pitch from the pleasure seeking to the overzealous mistrust that any end would probably prove a bit of a whimper regardless—unless Husson let their pile of sweaty bodies go on into the sunset with abandon. Her final choice isn’t without merit, though, bringing consequences for children and adults alike. The idyllic fantasy is just too tempting to accept any reality check waking them and us up.

Credit to the young actors who hold nothing back and truly invest in Husson’s mission to embrace taboo. Every word uttered and move made is flirtatious, each emotional jolt inviting a hellish state of pleasure fate must catch up to before it’s over. There’s nothing precious about their characters as innocence falls by the wayside early on. One slap to the face by a disapproving dad leads his daughter down a complicated path into the arms of someone else’s safety net. From watching to partaking to recruiting, the evolution of Broom’s Laeti and Lima’s George can be scary to witness. Every parent’s nightmare and every kid’s dream, this slippery slope leads towards a rebirth only ruin can provide.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) is screened at TIFF and opens on June 17 .

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VOD film review: Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

Review Overview

Stylish direction, lack of focus, mixed messages.

Matthew Turner | On 17, Jun 2016

Director: Eva Husson Cast: Finnegan Oldfield, Marilyn Lima, Lorenzo Lefèbvre , Daisy Broom, Fred Hotier, Manuel Husson Certificate: 18 Watch Bang Gang online in the UK: Curzon Home Cinema / BFI Player / TalkTalK TV Store / Rakuten TV / Google Play

This stylish debut from French writer-director Eva Husson is clearly inspired by the work of Larry Clark (Kids, Ken Park) and Gus Van Sant in its depiction of steamy, teenage adolescence spiralling out of control. However, it more closely resembles an episode of E4’s Skins – it may be all devil-may-care nihilism on the surface, but there’s a curious conservatism at the heart of it all, in much the same way that show’s often provocative content was ultimately limited by the boundaries of TV broadcasting rules.

Set in the French resort town of Biarritz during a heatwave, the film stars Daisy Broom and Marilyn Lima as best friends Laetitia and George, whose sex-obsessed friend Alex (Finnegan Oldfield) throws regular parties while his mother is away in Morocco for six months. After sleeping with and then being rejected by Alex (who then turns his attentions to Laetitia), a vengeful George turns a routine game of Truth or Dare into something more explicit – inspired by the porn films that Alex constantly projects onto the walls – and soon the regular parties become full-on teenage orgies, with the participants nick-naming themselves the Bang Gang (amusingly pronounced ‘Bong Gong’ throughout).

Broom and Lima deliver engaging performances and the film is at its strongest when it’s depicting their friendship, with its attendant unspoken jealousies. The problem is that the film lacks a clear focus, so we’re never quite sure whose story it is – initially, it seems like Laetitia’s, then George’s, but the voice-over narration belongs to Alex, who, if anything, is the character to suffer the least consequences from their actions. The film also flirts with, but fails to adequately explore, another form of teenage hedonism, with the character of Gabriel (Lorenzo Lefebvre), who likes to attend violent moshing parties in his friends’ garages.

On a similar note, the script fails to convince when it comes to the orgies evolving from a one-off, drug-fuelled game of Truth or Dare into a regular thing, particularly in the age of the smartphone, when the slightest indiscretion could end up on the internet (to be fair, that’s exactly what happens – the only surprise is that it doesn’t happen sooner). Indeed, if Husson is trying to say something meaningful about modern teenage ennui, then that message is largely lost – just as the film’s disappointingly conservative ending adopts an uncomfortably moralistic stance that seems at odds with the film’s original intentions.

Husson creates a hazy, dream-like atmosphere for the film (you can practically smell the marijuana smoke) and has a strong eye for an effective sequence (one moment sees the camera follow Alex through the party and into the pool), while also putting the film’s soundtrack to great use. However, the sex scenes themselves are remarkably tame (particularly compared to Larry Clark’s work) – it’s all artfully shot bare bottoms and breasts rather than actual genitalia and certainly nothing that would give the BBFC a headache (the 18 certificate is probably more down to the drug use).

The performances and direction ensure that Bang Gang is never less than watchable, but the nagging lack of substance eventually becomes frustrating.

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• Fri. Aug 2nd, 2024

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Movies & more

Movie Review – Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)

By ochippie

Director: Eva Husson

Starring: Marilyn Lima , Daisy Bloom , Finnegan Oldfield

French cinema has a certain mystique for American audiences, even when we don’t understand exactly what’s going on.  And I don’t mean because of the language, I mean because of the difference in styles between the two country’s storytelling mannerisms.  The French tend toward decadence whereas Americans tend toward bitterness, which should tell us something about the cultures, and shouldn’t come as a big shock.  We are intrigued by a style that features more sex, more romance, at least perceived, and we are often willing to sample something that, if produced here, wouldn’t carry the same appeal.  Such is the case with Bang Gang , an in-your-face coming-of-age tale that takes on a certain air given its country of origin but fails to deliver all that we might hope.

A group of teens in a small French town release their pent up energy and frustration on the weekends in the house of Alex, a popular boy left home alone by his wealthy, traveling mother.  Not so abnormal, friends partying and drinking in the supposed safety of their private circle.  But jealousy can’t stop from rearing its ugly head and making life much more complicated than it needs to be.  George and Laetitia both like Alex, but when George (a girl, by the way) is spurned, she turns to his best friend and begins a desperate game of truth or dare that will turn the weekend party into something much more sexual.  Anything goes in the Bang Gang, videos find their way online, lives are changed for the definite worse, and love blossoms in the most unlikely places.

You hear “a new french drama with sex and experimentation” and your American ears perk up, at least critics’ do, and average audiences often find themselves with their interest piqued as well, hoping to see something edgy & taboo.  But while Bang Gang is surely controversial, it isn’t Gaspar Noe’s Love , a film that pushes the envelope to the extreme and excites conversation wherever it appears.  The former is a teen version where the latter is adult, and having seen films that extend farther over the top, I wasn’t shocked or impressed.  Putting the sexual material aside, the rest of the film is rather boring and angsty, something we’ve seen before and will see again.  This isn’t a French film to look at as a gem to be found, it’s much more a regular, sub par movie that won’t find much attention either there or here, and with good reason.

My rating: ☆ ☆

Writer, Critic, Dad Columbus, Ohio, USA Denver Broncos, St. Louis Cardinals Colorado Avalanche, Duke Blue Devils

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• Cast & crew

A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern. A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern.

• Halina Reijn
• Nicole Kidman
• Harris Dickinson
• Antonio Banderas
• 1 nomination

Top cast 36

• Intern Rose

• Nude cult member

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

2024 Venice Film Festival Guide

• December 25, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Netherlands
• New York City, New York, USA (street scenes)
• Man Up Film
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes

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