MOVIE REVIEW : ‘C’est la Vie’ Fine but Forgettable Work by Kurys

French writer-director Diane Kurys has an enviable precision to her memory, and in “C’est la Vie” (at the Guild Theatre in San Diego) she recalls the summer of 1958 when she was 13, down to the corks that decorated a beach vendor’s hat and the lies her mother told her.

It’s extremely clear and sensual recall, covering this autobiographical young girl’s first, clumsy kiss and her realization that her mother has a lover, but unlike Kurys’ superb “Entre Nous,” which was this same shattering summer from another point of view, it’s nowhere nearly as affecting.

As “C’est la Vie” opens, the mother, Lena Korski, this time played by Nathalie Baye, is busy with motherly, petit-bourgeois lies. Buying a half-price train ticket from Lyons to their customary Brittany beach resort, La Baule Les Pins, she says that her younger daughter, Sophie, (Candice Lefranc) is 6, not 8.

She deceives both Sophie and 13-year-old Frederique, (Julie Bataille) by pretending she is going with them, then at the last minute sending them on their family vacation with their extremely put-out young maid, Odette. Over-brightly, she promises she’ll be along “very soon.” Freedom for mamas sometimes comes at a price; Kurys exacts hers now by the anger she can still resurrect toward her deceptions, minor and otherwise.

She seemed more forgiving in “Entre Nous,” when Lena was played by Isabelle Huppert and the story dealt with her deepening friendship with another woman. Here, Lena, her young artist-lover (Vincent London), even her angry husband Michel (Richard Berry) are in the background; it’s the seismographic reactions of Frederique to the changes in herself and her family that are the film’s minute concerns.

There’s a comfortable charm to these kids’ pranks; to their excitable uncle, Leon (Jean-Pierre Bacri), and their indulgent, lovely aunt, Bella (Zabou), pregnant for a fifth time, and to the complicity among the young cousins, especially the one Frederique has a crush on.

The French seem to have perfected this Colette-like sense of recall: the smell of a certain suntan oil, the Bobby Darin record everyone loved; whispered conversations between adults, secrets between terribly knowing children. Mostly, the French have the absolute conviction that such memories are of fascination to the rest of the world too.

Sometimes they are. Truffaut walked that line all the time. The marvelous “36 Fillette” combined truth with total recall to create adolescent sexuality as it really is. “Murmur of the Heart’s” precise observation of one specific summer gave Louis Malle the background for a classic film. In “Le Grand Chemin,” another bucolic, explosive summer--this time from the point of view of a young city boy--cathartic emotions emerged between warring parents.

Far less goes on here, certainly less that’s fresh or arresting; enough to keep one awake but not really held. Kurys’ first in this trio, “Peppermint Soda,” had its own young fizz; “Entre Nous” was perfume, with haunting under-notes; “C’est la Vie” is cologne, pleasant but ephemeral.

‘C’EST LA VIE’

A Samuel Goldwyn Co. release. Producer Alexandre Arcady. Director Diane Kurys. Screenplay Kurys, Alain Le Henry. Camera Giuseppe Lanci. Editor Raymonde Guyot. Music Philippe Sarde. With Nathalie Baye, Julie Bataille, Richard Berry, Zabou, Vincent London, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Candice Lefranc, Alexis Derlon.

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (one scene of domestic violence).