Rent Peppermint Soda (1977)

Hopelessly Tangled - Peppermint Soda review by griggs

Peppermint Soda follows two sisters growing up in 1960s France, and the period detail earns its keep — chalk dust, cheap scent, that specific 1963 boredom. What struck me is how little the film reaches for a big statement. Nobody delivers a speech about growing up; the girls just stumble through it, a sulk here, an argument there, a small humiliation that lands harder than it should, until childhood has shifted underneath them without either noticing.

The sisters are the real engine here — each other’s safest person and most irritating obstacle, often within the same scene. Funny, tender and occasionally quite sour, it feels like flicking through someone else’s memory. There’s a family resemblance to The 400 Blows and Naked Childhood in how seriously it takes a child’s small disasters, though slotting it too neatly alongside either would sell short what Kurys is doing here. This is a film about being a girl and a sister, and about how those two things can become hopelessly tangled.

The soundtrack takes one baffling detour into Cliff Richard territory that nobody involved should be forgiven for. Kurys bottles adolescence beautifully, letting it go a little flat here and there, which somehow suits it.

Delicate, sharp and only occasionally sabotaged by the jukebox.