Cinema has a long-standing love affair with the delinquent. Chances are you’ve seen him before. He wears baggy clothes. He cusses. He’s about 16, always handsome and helplessly prone to losing his temper. With Standing Tall, French director Emmanuelle Bercot takes on such a wayward son and shapes a sincere story out of his plight. The presence of a queenly Catherine Deneuve only helps ground the film as a compassionate look at a lost boy, tossed between schools, counselors and juvenile homes. The film has all the right ingredients for a strong, realist drama, and yet something is missing. For all its importance as a social issue drama, there is something secretly very old-fashioned going on, and the incessant yelling doesn’t help.
When we first meet Malony, he’s a lamb; a small child playing with blocks on the floor of a government office. He looks up in confusion as his mother (Sara Forestier) shrieks at the Judge (Deneuve). “Keep him, that’s ok by me!” She shouts before storming out. It’s an intense scene, and Bercot’s camera hovers between the actor’s faces with an assured, unobtrusive eye. Standing Tall cuts forward to a new Malony. He’s now a slouching teenager in a hooded sweatshirt (Rod Paradot), swerving at high speeds without a driver’s license. Pop music blares in the background, and the energy is high. For Malony, this rush of freedom behind the wheel is living. It’s as exciting for him as it is for us. If only the film could sustain this manic energy.
Instead, the high doesn’t last. The stunt pulls Malony in front of the Judge and into a world of guilt and punishment that he’s obviously familiar with. His mother is back, and she tries to defend him while clearly lacking the emotional intelligence to handle such an errant boy. In the Judge’s office, we also meet Yann (Benoit Magimel), the guidance counselor and ex-delinquent who is assigned to Malony’s case. Over the course of the film, he evolves from enemy to paternal icon. While that sounds like a spoiler, it’s easy to see coming from the get-go.
After an interminable argument, Malony is sentenced to a juvenile detention center. He goes but not without a fight. As he kicks, swears and calls out threats, Standing Tall faces its biggest obstacle. That is, it has to make us believe in Malony. It has to make us want him to overcomes his anger and succeed in Deneuve and Magimel’s right-minded society. Bercot’s refusal to crack open his tough shell is a bold choice, though it makes Standing Tall into an often unpleasant viewing experience. There were many times when one might think, “Just put him in jail and be done with it.” This is dangerous because it distorts the very mission of the film.
The rehabilitation facility offers an idyllic country setting and a staff of trained professionals, but Malony couldn’t care less. It’s increasingly hard to feel sorry for him because he’s a white, straight, able-bodied man, throwing away opportunities that other boys in the rehab center don’t have. After much resistance, Malony eventually relents. When he applies to a high school and gets rejected, the scene is sad and vital. Bercot is a firm believer in the importance of education, and her goal of holding up Malony as a case study is an important one. But whereas the Dardenne brothers gracefully turned the young troublemakers in La Promesse (1996) and Rosetta (1999) into fiercely sympathetic, utterly lovable victims of larger societal forces, Bercot delivers a more conventional vision.
During his time in rehab, Malony meets tomboy Tess (Diane Rouxel), and they begin a messy romance. Tess is a lovely character, though her own rebellious streak remains woefully underdeveloped. As they sneak off for secret trysts, Tess becomes the root cause of Malony’s recovery. It turns her into an old-fashioned female savoir. Bercot makes us wait until the end to see Malony’s soft side, and it comes with the arrival of a baby—a symbol of the traditional “put your head down and work” ethos that Malony has spent his life battling. Is recovery really as simple as having a child as 17? In Standing Tall, authority figures are the good guys, and the experiences of women don’t matter as much as those of the men they save.