The French have a special knack for telling naturalistic, intimate stories. The nation’s treasured André Téchiné has been due for a strong film, since his post-2000 output (with the exception of Witness) has been leaving too much to be desired. To fill this void and remind everyone why some hail him as the greatest post-New Wave director, Téchiné focuses on the youthful crossroads of desire in Being 17 in order to capture the complexity of a relationship between two boys. From mutual animosity to forced friendship to the awakening of something neither expect, Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Tom (Corentin Fila) evolve through an expertly paced 2 hours on screen in ways that should leave audiences celebrating the spirited farrago of youth.

The lively beautiful rush of the opening credits create a comforting ease that’s usually attributed to someone who’s got a world of experience to work with. “Here is a director who knows what he’s doing, put your trust in him and enjoy this emotional ride,” they seem to say as the scenic country setting whizzes by over glorious music. The vibrancy of the opening foreshadows the tone that will go on to pervade over the entire film and the tense push-and-pull dynamic between Damien and Tom. They’re schoolmates, a couple of high-school loners who get picked last for basketball practice, and who—for no discernible reason—become enemies.

Tom lives in the mountains with his adoptive mother Christine (Mama Prassinos) and father Jacques (Jean Fornerod), and is in a constant state of detached ambivalence with the world around him, feeling assuaged only when swimming naked in the lake or tending to the farm animals. Damien lives with his mother, Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain), the country doctor with a heart of gold, while his father Nathan (Alexis Loret) is on active tour duty as a helicopter pilot. Damien practices defensive techniques with neighbor Paulo (Jean Corso), an old-school vet and friend of his dad’s, and loves to cook meals for his mom. When Marianne gets called in to see a sick Christine, she takes a liking to the quiet and polite Tom, who pays her with a chicken in the film’s first organic laugh-out-loud moment.

When it’s discovered that Christine is pregnant with another child, a surprise considering the many miscarriages she had to endure before adopting Tom, Marianne suggests that Tom stay with her and Damien after school, in order to get his grades back up and not lose three hours commuting from the farm. Reluctantly the two boys agree to this arrangement, but tensions escalate until they decide to fight it out once and for all on a mountaintop. When the rain interrupts them mid-fight, however, they seek refuge in a cave and share a sneaky joint in silence. That’s when something shifts in the atmosphere.

Téchiné, and co-writer Celine Sciamma (the writer/director of the excellent Girlhood) have a gracefully raw cinéma vérité approach to their subject, creating a sense of effortless familiarity and attachment with the two leads. It reminded me of Blue Is The Warmest Color in many ways, but most of all in its agenda-free approach to the theme of homosexuality; without putting it in your face (in contrast to, for example, how it’s done on the small screen in American shows like Sense8). There’s no preaching and no politics here; just organic evolution of confused teenage feelings, and super strong character-building, blossoming into something fundamentally universal. Klein is the more experienced of the two young actors in the lead, and while he is undoubtedly strong, the revelation is Fila, who makes his screen debut with subtle ferociousness and irresistible charismatic presence. Of the adults, Kiberlain gets to the do most and she is wonderful as the lonely, warm-hearted, motherly Marianne.

The story’s build-up and progression in the first two thirds of Being 17, laced with intelligent and spontaneous humor, is rock-solid. It’s when we get into the third trimester that faith gets lost, thanks to some see-through conventional plot engineering and a roundabout focus on Marianne. The closing moments as well break the naturalistic spell with an overloaded dose of sugary optimism, in stark contrast to the rest of the film’s prudence. But even with its noticeable rough edges, Téchiné’s film breathes with a poetic temperance; a beautifully structured, finely acted ballad on teenage angst and passion.

Girlhood, if anything, is the coming-of-age genre’s attempt at exploring those pivotal teen years by way of mood. The dysphoria, the sense that growing wiser sometimes comes hand in hand with the world growing smaller—these are the strokes with which French director Céline Sciamma paints the life of Marieme (Karidja Touré), a 16-year-old girl living in a poor suburb outside Paris.

Sure, Marieme, treads familiar water: failing out of school, falling in with the wrong crowd, and awkwardly navigating first love, but it’s the environment more than the events that makes her circumstance feel heavy and suffocating. Just as American Beauty had an affinity for the color red, Marieme’s world here plays with hues of teal and a deep, somber blue. Some scenes just use accents of color in the clothing or walls, but others are washed over in a dark blue overlay—one pivotal scene finds Marieme and her friends disengaging from school yard fights long enough to get all dolled up in a hotel room they’ve rented for the night (surely, their little refuge from the world). The girls sing along shamelessly to Rhianna’s “Diamonds”—the whole song—as if for three minutes of their lives, this is who they choose to be. The effect feels like something of a dream state, like these girls who fear their fathers and brothers at home as they suffer endless abuse, can come alive—but only under the cover of shadows. That’s what the world has left for them.

The rest of the film is anything but diva like, relying on the ordinary: wandering the malls, small-town gossip and fights with rival cliques. This world exists largely in veils of teal—the walls to the room Marieme shares with her sister, the hospital where her mom works as a janitor, the insides of the school counselor’s office as she’s told maybe she should consider vocational school. The color makes one feel exactly as expected: a little off, sickly, uneasy.

If all that isn’t dizzying enough, the film’s lead song, “Girlhood” by Para One, serves as both a transition between scenes and an audible manifestation of Marieme’s anxiety. The bright synths repeat quick eighth notes that hold a certain excitement about new directions—in some ways, falling in with the “wrong” crowd is the best thing that happened to Marieme as it coincides with a slow but certain development of her confidence—but like all uptempo songs, there is also a sense that things might break under pressure. Marieme likewise can never quite find solid ground, choosing to uproot herself from one unhealthy living environment after another. The art direction and music combined give the sense that it’s not just tough odds Marieme must overcome, but the pervasive feelings of confusion and hopelessness that threaten to consume her.

But let’s get this straight: this isn’t a tale of hope and strong-willed determination, a young female knowing what she wants and going after it. Sciamma’s Marieme is more layered than that. It’s actually difficult to pin down who she is until the movie’s end, if even then. As she falls in with her new group of friends, it’s hard to tell if this whole tough-girl act is an appeal to fit in or who she already had become. Sometimes she appears timid and reserved and other times she seems bold and self-assured. Touré proves an astute actress for navigating the worlds of innocence and experience (often at the same time), especially in scenes with younger sister Bébé (Simina Soumare), who serves as a foil for innocence and a bit of a reminder that Marieme’s story will be repeated again and again.

As compelling as Marieme’s relationship with her sister is—not to mention the beautiful character arc created in her engagement with the world in the safety net of a gang of friends—the film’s second half struggles to maintain the same levels of tension and insight. Moving out on her own, all of the complex character relationships are abandoned for would-be antagonists who are never really developed enough to fear. We get the film’s first archetypes, and Marieme’s strides to rise above mean a bit less when her monsters feel faceless. Certainly the day-to-day grind is monotonous, but making this point doesn’t seem to be the narrative’s goal. As the film’s momentum wanes, somehow the issues she faces get more dramatic: bosses who don’t respect boundaries, boyfriends whose expectations fall in line with overarching patriarchal paradigms, and questions about what a girl faced with tough choices will do. But none of these questions seem to resonate. Maybe it’s because the film, while lovely in its portrayal of one girl, struggles when trying to say too many things about the world outside that girl.

But the biggest battle here is with herself, and fortunately this is where we return by the movie’s end. And the payoff feels real. Marieme’s story is a constant game of taking two steps forward and one step back, and yet even without clearcut promises, her path to discovery feels authentic and brave—in the adult sense of the word, when bravery is about considering more than immediate comforts. Self-discovery, when it’s tackled honestly, is a long process, and Girlhood honors that as much as a two-hour film can hope to. Coming-of-age stories sometimes put too much emphasis on nailing down the specifics to that daunting question “What do I want for my life?” Maybe true strength comes from staring that question right in the face and saying, “Not this.”

Director Céline Sciamma‘s third film may be titled Bande de filles (Band of Girls) in its native language (French), but it’s English language title is Girlhood, which is sure to cause some confusion with Richard Linklater’s recent film Boyhood. In Girlhood, the filmmaker (Water Lilies, Tomboy) directs her own script starring Karidja Touré, Assa Sylla, Lindsay Karamoh, and Mariétou Touré. Described as a raw portrayal of the lives of a group of black high school girls in a tough part of Paris, the movie follows Marieme (Karidja) as she reinvents herself after falling in with a new group of friends.

After making its debut as part of the Director’s Fortnight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Girlhood was picked up for U.S. distribution by Strand Releasing. Girlhood will make its North American debut at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, before its October 20th release in France and subsequent domestic release sometime in 2015.

Watch the trailer for Girlhood