Poison Friends

Directed by Emmanuel Bourdieu

In recent years, the complex interpersonal politics of the college scene has become woefully underrated. Ersatz scholars of all things counterculture believe that current generations of university seat-fillers eschew intellectual pursuits in favor of rampant partying and general societal insubordination. The mentality has filtered into blockbuster comedies like Old School, but its seeds were first planted with Animal House. Admittedly, the concurrent attempts to explore the intellectual circuitry of the collegiate mindset don’t make much money, but neither do most recent college graduates. Classics of the genre, like the magnificent 1973 hunt-for-the-diploma law school thriller, The Paper Chase, place particular emphasis on the hypersensitivity of the advanced student mindset, a world filled with knowledge and ambition but lacking any cogent sense of restraint. The publicity-friendly filmmakers behind Good Will Hunting earnestly suggested that a pure desire for spreading knowledge beats at the heart of academia. French director Emmanuel Bourdieu doesn’t negate that premise, but his intricate drama, Poison Friends, shows how the competitive nature of a studious environment can cause personal allegiances to get lost in the library.

Bourdieu’s small, quiet movie focuses on three young friends who meet during a lit class at the Sorbonne and form an immediate hierarchy. Although each harbors inhibitions about the immediate demands of the marketplace for budding writers, their suave leader, André (Thibault Vinçon), gives the boys the necessary motivation for taking steps toward realizing their dreams of success in the publication business. But his support gradually transforms into anger and resentment when his disciples surpass him, and the trivial dynamic of their relationships transform into competition.    

As other reviews have already pointed out, Poison Friends is very much a product of its trendy European locale—filled with extensive coffee shop chatter and quixotic exchanges. The real triumph of Bourdieu’s disciplined plotting is that he never condescends to his characters by turning them into wisecracking miscreants for the sake of enlivening every frame. The vitality emerges as a result of the overall subdued tone. It’s a powerful understatement that’s eloquently stated. One throwaway line says it all: “Shallow modernism is in.”