Jumbo | Little White Lies

Jum­bo

08 Jul 2021 / Released: 09 Jul 2021

Circular blue and white lights shining down on a person's face in a dark room.
Circular blue and white lights shining down on a person's face in a dark room.
3

Anticipation.

How... can someone fall deeply in love with a funfair ride? Guess there’s only one way to find out...

3

Enjoyment.

Commits fully to its silly concept, but runs out of steam quite a way before the ride ends.

2

In Retrospect.

A decent calling-card feature, but Zoé Wittock will go on to better things.

Noémie Merlant’s fair­ground employ­ee hitch­es a ride on the carousel of love in this sci-fi tinged romance.

Some­times, as a teenag­er look­ing for a mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion in the Bel­gian coun­try­side, you’ve got to take what you can get. Noémie Merlant’s bob-haired Jeanne, unable to find sat­is­fac­tion among the rugged male spec­i­mens of her sleepy burg, instead decides to insti­gate a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a tilt-a-whirl ride at the local fun­fair which, she is sur­prised to dis­cov­er, is pas­sion­ate­ly reciprocated.

What plays out is a pas­tiche of teen movie clichés in which Jeanne’s ten­ta­tive steps towards her new roman­tic ide­al are stymied by the atti­tudes of her hot-blood­ed moth­er (Emmanuelle Bercot) and a string of unen­light­ened work colleagues.

It’s a lit­tle like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, in which a person’s world is sud­den­ly torn apart by an unex­plained but intense attrac­tion to some flash­ing lights in the sky. Only this time, the intox­i­cat­ed par­ty engages in oily erot­ic dreams (or are they?) with her mechan­i­cal beloved.

It feels as if first-time fea­ture direc­tor Zoé Wit­tock has made exact­ly the film she want­ed to make, and she’s been giv­en the resources to exe­cute a cou­ple of mem­o­rable, sci-fi-tinged set pieces that offer a show­case for her tal­ents as a mak­er of mem­o­rable images.

Yet the sce­nario doesn’t offer any­thing in the shape of insight or emo­tion, as it’s used sole­ly as a dra­mat­ic spring­board rather than a source of deep­er the­mat­ic dis­cov­ery. Which is a shame.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.