It Boy (2013)

It Boy, known in its native France as 20 ans d'écart, is a 2013 romantic comedy about a 38-year-old magazine editor who feigns a relationship with a 20-year-old to improve her professional image. It is a film of modest ambitions and even more modest cultural reach. The director, David Moreau, has assembled a competent cast led by Virginie Efira and Pierre Niney, and the result is a pleasant, forgettable diversion that asks nothing of its audience beyond a willingness to tolerate contrivance.

On the various indices of contemporary social consciousness, the film is a barren landscape. Racial themes are absent. Environmental concerns do not intrude. The fashion-magazine setting, which might in other hands invite a critique of wealth or beauty standards, is instead played for glamour and light office comedy. There is no LGBTQ+ representation, no neurodivergent character, no historical revisionism. The casting is predominantly white, with a few North African actors in minor roles, but the film makes no comment on this. The only faint stirrings of progressive sensibility come from the central premise: a woman in her late thirties pursuing both a promotion and a younger man. This mildly inverts the standard age-gap dynamic, but the film treats it as farce, not as a statement. The lecture energy is minimal; the film preaches nothing.

We are left with a French romantic comedy that does exactly what it says on the tin. It is not offensive, nor is it enlightening. It exists in a cultural vacuum, untouched by the debates of its time. For those who track such things, it is a zero on almost every axis, with only the faintest blip of gender inversion to note. A sommelier of social messaging would find this vintage thin, almost water. But as a harmless diversion, it serves its purpose. It Boy is a film that will not change your mind about anything, which may be its only distinguishing feature.