In an era when so much teenage angst is channelled into borderline misery porn (we’re looking at you, Euphoria), the innocence of French drama Just An Illusion acts as a breath of fresh air.

It helps that our central character Vincent (winningly played by screen newcomer Simon Boublil) is on the cusp, not being of the age to embrace the cinematic teen tropes of sex, drink, drugs and rebellion. Instead, he’s stranded in that all-too-palpable hinterland between childhood and adulthood, subject to pre-adolescent premonitions he doesn’t quite understand, yet winsome enough to convey the infancy he’s rapidly leaving behind.

It is, in short, a terrific performance, and the main engine of the new movie from the makers of the smash-hit 2011 drama Intouchables, which still stands as the second-highest-grossing French release of all time. Although already a box office hit in its home country, it’s perhaps unlikely that Just An Illusion will scale the same heights, given that it lacks the former’s valedictory triumph-over-adversity narrative. That said, it’s still very charming, and it taps into a similarly rich vein of universality: namely, the inescapable pull of one’s first crush, the melancholic observations of parental stagnation in marriage, and the rough-housing that comes with older siblings.

It’s set in 1985, which naturally means the soundtrack is a banger (everything from 10CC’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ to The Alan Parsons Project’s ‘Eye in the Sky’). Co-helmers Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano ease us into the era of shoulder pads, business coats and leg warmers with pleasing tact and restraint, locating Vincent as a Parisian French-Jewish kid of Algerian extraction who is wracked with nerves over his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. Millennials of a certain vintage will no doubt feel ruminative at seeing actor Louis Garrel, once a sexed-up bohemian in Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial The Dreamers (2003), here playing Vincent’s dowdy, despondent dad Yves, newly displaced from his executive position at work, but lacking the gumption to tell his family.

Garrel is well-matched by comedian/actress Camille Cottin as Vincent’s mother Sandrine, whose latent IT skills in this early Apple Mac era could be about to blow the doors off her male-dominated household. She also appears to be lusted after by their apartment’s superintendent, Mr Berger (Pierre Lottin), to Yves’ consternation. Vincent’s older brother is Arnaud (Alexis Rosenstiehl), whose school-of-hard-knocks approach toward his younger sibling masks genuine affection, and acts as the gateway toward a multiplicity of nostalgic music references (The Cure‘s Robert Smith regularly gets name-checked and is the focus of one especially amusing joke).

Read our review of the Louis Garrel film Redoubtable →

Tonally, the film is perhaps closest to John Carney’s endearing Sing Street (this is especially evident in the brotherly disputes over the validity of music genres, namely rock versus funk), albeit absent the live music element. The colour scheme is bright, the energy level is high, and the outlook is relentlessly earnest, occasionally bordering on saccharine. Garrel and Cottin do an excellent job selling the quick-fire spontaneity of the frequent parental disputes, contrasting it with a lovely scene in which they re-engage with their youth and get down to the Pointer Sisters hit, ‘I’m So Excited’.

Even so, it’s Boublil’s film, and he carries it with aplomb. The course of Vincent’s life in the film unfolds as a series of vignettes, chief among them his infatuation with his school acquaintance, Anne-Karine (Jeanne Lamartine). Their chemistry, as with all the actors in the film, is superb, and for all his bumbling, Vincent is shown to have a little game in his verbal interplay with his potential girlfriend. Again, the tone is open-hearted rather than cringy and lewd (more About a Boy than Good Boys), inviting us to revel in Vincent’s awkwardness while also inviting us to admire the occasional sharpness in his wooing (this is where the aforementioned Robert Smith gag comes into play). There’s also an especially on-the-nose reference to a certain John Cusack teen-movie classic that will no doubt invite both joy and consternation in equal measure.

One could accuse the film of dwelling in simplistic nostalgia bait for the analogue, pre-screen era. Or one could be charitable and say that Nakache and Toledano recognise the irresistible allure of a period in which the video shop was the hub of friendship activity, here leading to a genuinely funny running gag about an absconded porn video, and the unexpected places in which it turns up. The primary register is cheeky, not smutty, a film that alludes to many complex issues, including the ethnic identity of its central character, without ever fully committing to true darkness or complexity. That said, given the period in which we now find ourselves, one riven with fear, pearl-clutching and navel-gazing, maybe it’s exactly the kind of palate cleanser we need.

★★★

In cinemas on September 11th / Louis Garrel, Camille Cottin, Simon Boublil, Alexis Rosenstiehl, Pierre Lottin / Dir: Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano / Met Film Distribution / 12A