La colle (2017)

Benjamin “Ben” Marcaillou (Arthur Mazet), a high school student, is secretly in love with another student, Leila (Karidja Touré). Unfortunately, nobody really pays any attention to him, except Jean-Édouard “Jean-Ed” (Issa Doumbia), his best friend, who is in love with Fraîcheur (Najaa Bensaid), the school’s bimbo. One evening, Ben, who secretly visits porn sites, decides to try the Akinator game and wishes that Leila and he could be together. The next day, Benjamin finds himself in detention for two hours on a Saturday afternoon. He has been wrongly accused of tagging one of the walls, when the real culprit is Greg, a student union activist. Ben meets the other students in detention: Fraîcheur, Greg, Crevette (a student who is bullied because of his short stature), Myriam (a tomboy), Mourad (a thug), Max (the school’s star), and Dugon (Thomas VDB), a supervisor who is supposed to keep them in line but whom nobody really respects, partly because of his name. Leïla arrives too. She needs a math book to study, but she doesn’t have hers with her. Ben lets her sit beside him. Whenever Ben is more than three minutes away from Leïla, time stops and events start over from the moment Leïla gets up to come and sit beside him. Ben realizes he is stuck in a time loop. The events repeat endlessly. At first, Ben tries to get out of the time loop as quickly as possible. He takes the opportunity to do whatever he wants, until he ends up in the nurse’s office after an accident. There he learns that the nurse (Sonia Rolland), whom he thought had only recently been assigned to the job, has been there for decades. She, too, made a wish on Akinator: to regain her youthful, attractive appearance, but the wish has only been partly fulfilled. Ben realizes that every time he returns to the start of detention, he is the only one whose memories remain intact, and he keeps all the things he had with him before, such as a handkerchief stained with his blood. He tries to win Leïla over, but every attempt fails until he gets the young woman’s attention with a comic book that closely resembles his own misadventures. Leïla tells him he has talent, but that he should develop the secondary characters’ psychology more. Ben understands that he needs to be less self-centered and take an interest in other people. One by one, he talks with each of the students in detention, gets to know them, and finds out why they are there. Fraîcheur hit a teacher who tried to violate her physical integrity. Myriam goes to detention to honor her mother, whom she promised never to miss an opportunity to go to school for. Mourad would rather spend his Saturday in detention to escape his everyday life. Greg’s parents have values diametrically opposed to his own. Crevette feels rejected. Leïla is studying for her baccalaureate exams to escape family pressure, since her father is unemployed. The nurse also tells Ben that Dugon was a traumatized student at the school and that his relationship with his wife is troubled. As Ben is about to show Leïla his comic book, Max steps in and throws the pages out the window. Desperate at the thought that he might never succeed, Ben is surprised when Leïla helps him pick up the pages in the rain. He then advises the others to stop playing the characters they portray and to be themselves. When detention finally ends, Jean-Édouard meets up with Ben the following week. Things have changed. Ben is now dating Leïla. Fraîcheur has become more reserved. Myriam is more feminine and is dating Greg. Max embraces his passion for ballet. Mourad and Crevette have started a friendship. Dugon is now more considerate toward his wife.