The gentle pacing of this film was well suited to the dramatic arc as the central characters came to terms with not only their burgeoning sexuality but with its relationship to friendship and the complications that balancing these two elements could lead to. |t was a good example of how the slow unfolding of a story could, cinematically, be as easily and effectively involving as a rapid-fire and more lurid style of telling. It gave it an air of realism and the conclusion was excellent - with as much being left, rightly and understandably, as open and questioning as was neatly tied up and concluded - because life is not like that.
The title references a fable by La Fontaine, analysed in the pupils’ class about the flexible reed which bends and survives the storm as opposed to the rigid oak which does not and is destroyed. The connections between this and the different aspects of the lives, relationships and emotions of the main characters was well and subtly conveyed - in many cases they started off with oak-like rigidity but, by the end had matured to reed-like flexibility. This was well and subtly done.
Something of a little gem.