Hervé (Vincent Lacoste) and best friend Camel (Anthony Sonigo) are 14-year-old misfits out to slake their insatiable adolescent lust through endless talking, thinking and fantasizing about girls in their class. Copious onanism takes place but not a single score—even verbal—with the opposite sex, until hopelessly average Hervé becomes the unlikely object of attention from the school’s sex symbol, Aurore (Alice Tremolieres), provoking conspiracy theories, jealousies and recriminations among his classmates. Riad Sattouf’s sharp and very funny debut film, shot with an effective rawness and featuring impressively true-to-life performances from a nonprofessional and multicultural cast of French teenagers, is a completely refreshing and clear-eyed (though not clear-skinned) look at the world from inside the sweaty-palmed perspective of contemporary youth. It’s no surprise that the adults surrounding the kids—ungenerously scrutinized from the teens’ perspective—provoke some of the greatest laughs.

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Written by Riad Sattouf, Marc Syrigas. Photographed by Dominique Colin. With Vincent Lacoste, Anthony Sonigo, Julie Scheibling, Alice Tremolieres. (85 min, Other Angle)