Peppermint Soda

Peppermint Soda is a 1977 French coming-of-age comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Diane Kurys. This autobiographical film was her directorial debut, and it won the Louis Delluc Prize at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. The film follows two teenage sisters over the course of the year 1963, with the title referring to a grown-up carbonated beverage that the younger sister drinks in a café. The high school where the film takes place is the Lycée Jules-Ferry in Paris. The film is partly based on director Kurys' experiences, and opens with a title card that states: "For my sister—who still hasn't given me back my orange sweater." Plot In September 1963, 13-year-old Anne Weber and her 15-year-old sister Frédérique are spending the summer holiday with their newly divorced father on the coast. They then return to Paris, where they live with their mother, for the school year. The girls attend a strict all-girls school, the Lycée Jules-Ferry. At school, the introverted Anne is an underachiever and is mocked by a teacher for a substandard drawing during art class. She is upset at her mother for not buying her stockings, since everyone else at the school wears them. Anne is also anxious to get her period because it signifies reaching womanhood, and so she pretends she has menstrual cramps despite not actually having begun her period. She and her friends discuss what they know about sex and humorously reveal their lack of knowledge about it. She also sneaks a look at the letters exchanged between Frédérique and her boyfriend Marc, and falsely claims to her school friends that Marc is her boyfriend.