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The baccalauréat, or the bac, is the French rite of passage into adulthood referred to in the title of Maurice Pialat's Passe ton bac d'abord, or Graduate First, a docufictional slice of life centered on the 19-year-olds of the town of Lens in northern France. Pialat employs a mix of professional and non-professional actors to suggest that this emergence from the crucible of secondary school and adolescence is not exactly the joyous event it's celebrated as, especially in a place like Lens, an economically depressed former coal mining town. The choices for post-graduate life boil down to marriage, marginal employment, the dole, or escape, and Pialat's film views all of those options with a melancholy eye. Graduate First is not without its comic moments, especially in its view of the clumsiness of adolescence and the incomprehension of elders, but the attempt to tell too many stories makes for a scattered film.
