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.
Published 8 Jul 2021
How... can someone fall deeply in love with a funfair ride? Guess there’s only one way to find out...
Commits fully to its silly concept, but runs out of steam quite a way before the ride ends.
A decent calling-card feature, but Zoé Wittock will go on to better things.
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