A major work played in a minor key, cinematographer-turned-director Marine Atlan’s magnificent, melancholic and moving feature directorial debut “La Gradiva” is one of those true discoveries that you only get a few times in life. It’s not just an illuminating portrait of youth, but a potent film about history, the now, and the future, gently reflecting on big questions through the eyes of a generation right on the cusp of having to face down all of it as adults.
At the same time that it engages with these more existential, increasingly heavy questions, it also remains wonderfully light on its feet. It’s often quite funny, perfectly capturing the banter that can take place between kids. Shot by Atlan and her collaborator Pierre Mazoyer, it’s a film of consistently stunning, sublime visuals.
Whether it’s through one of the most striking dream sequences you’ll ever see or in a shot lingering on a boat floating away from the shore, every evocative composition only heightens the sense of emotional upheaval that’s on the horizon for all its characters. It’s all part of how the film finds an enduring splendor in both the beauty of youthful exploration and the complex, quietly tragic revelations that it all builds to.
The film, which recently won the top prize at the Cannes sidebar Semaine de la Critique (Critics’ Week) at the Cannes Film Festival, follows a group of French high schoolers who are going on a class trip to the ruins of Pompeii. Overseen by their kindhearted and passionate yet exhausted teacher Mercier, an excellent Antonia Buresi, they all have their own distinct personalities that Atlan remains wonderfully attuned to.
Most centrally, there is Toni (Colas Quignard), who we first meet when he is surreptitiously observing his best friend James (Mitia Capellier-Audat) and Angela (Hadya Fofana) trying (and failing) to discreetly hook up on the train. Without a word being uttered, we can already see that Toni, a boisterous yet insecure young man who often takes part in such hook-ups of his own, is still jealous and hurt by what he’s seeing. His desire for James, someone who seems to largely remain above the struggles or concerns of everyone else, is matched only by his desire for a better understanding of himself and where his family came from.
Indeed, just as the stories of Pompeii soon become a critical part of the film (whose title refers to the 1902 Wilhelm Jensen novel “Gradiva: a Pompeian fantasy” about an archaeologist who becomes fixated on the statue of a woman in a museum), so too do the stories of Toni’s own family. He recounts, with great storytelling verve, how his grandmother, a cleaner at a manor, and his grandfather, her employer, fell in love only for societal expectations and an earthquake to break them apart.
It’s a nice, romantic story, though it is already one that you can feel Toni is quite taken by and needs to be true. He’s hoping that on the trip he’ll be able to get more insight into this past and see the ruins of the manor that is at the center of the story.
But for Toni and the rest of the class, which also includes Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), secretly the most interesting character of the film, the truth about their lives that gets uncovered on their trip is not one that any of them could have expected. Critically, the film does not hinge on a shock twist, but on all the accumulating details of their lives before they will be brought face to face with the fragility of them. With her co-writer Anne Brouillet, the way Atlan completely immerses us in the little textures of their lives, their passions, their conflicts, and their aspirations for themselves, makes even this brief snapshot feel eternal.
All the characters are not just remarkably well-written, but they’re acted with such naturalism that they immediately feel like fully-formed people. It’s as though you’re just looking in on an actual class of kids, many of whom are proving to be a headache for Mercier, yet are still ones you profoundly care for.
When the future and past, already intertwined in the film, further converge, with Toni eventually going on a pilgrimage of sorts to find answers just as college acceptances are being sent out, “La Gradiva” goes from being good to great. Contradictions are brought into focus, the stories characters told themselves about life unravel, and whatever small sliver of youthful innocence the students had is dashed in the blink of an eye. It immediately brought to mind the feeling I had when first encountering an unexpected loss growing up. For a film to conjure this, something I haven’t thought about for decades, is as remarkable as it is agonizing.
In a shattering scene where Mercier must deliver information to her students, we can see already in her eyes and posture how she knows that it will mark the end of something for each of the students. All the pieces fall into place just as they break apart, with the inescapably life-changing moment becoming one that brings everything else into focus.
As this moment lingers before we’re then whisked away from it, there is a closing denouement of such quiet, earnest power that I found myself holding my breath and not daring to look away. At this moment, Atlan doesn’t offer up any final easy answers, but, down to the very last line, creates an astounding achievement all the same in the pursuit.
1-2 acquired “La Gradiva” out of Cannes for theatrical release.
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